tenement
n.n. a building that has many small flats or apartments in it, usually for people who are not very rich. It is a word you might hear in old stories about cities like Edinburgh.
n. a building containing multiple small flats or apartments, typically of a low standard and occupied by a working-class population. Often used in legal or historical contexts to describe housing conditions.
The old tenement building stood on the edge of the city.
The city council decided to renovate the crumbling tenement to provide better living conditions for the residents.
The historical novel explores the lives of families living in a crowded tenement, highlighting the social and economic challenges of urban poverty in the nineteenth century.
From Middle English tenement, from Anglo-Norman tenement (“holding”), from Old French tenement, from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō (“hold”).