abode
- 01 C1 Advanced
the place where you live, like a house or apartment.
a place of residence, dwelling, or habitation. Often used in legal contexts or fixed expressions like 'of no fixed abode'.
Simple“The police described the suspect as a man of no fixed abode.”
In context“The humble cottage had been his place of abode for over forty years, serving as a sanctuary from the pressures of city life.”
UsageCommonly appears in the legal phrase 'of no fixed abode' to describe someone who is homeless or transient.
Synonyms
“Bound to his abode with nothing but his interests, he developed groundbreaking theories of vision in a book entitled Kitab al-Manazir (‘Book of Optics’).”
“In the 1990s, if you asked a good chunk of the global population where Will Smith lived, they would instantly picture a huge, white abode in Bel Air.”
From Middle English abod, abad, from Old English *ābād, related to ābīdan (“to abide”); see abide. Cognate with Scots abade, abaid (“abode”). For the change of nouns, compare abode, preterite of abide.
From an alteration (with bode) of Middle English abeden (“to announce”), from Old English ābēodan (“to command, proclaim”), from a- + bēodan (“to command, proclaim”). Superficial analysis is a- + bode (“presage, portend, announce”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.