- present participle of dwell.
dwelling
Americannoun
-
dwellings
plural
noun
Synonym Usage
See house.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of dwelling
Explanation
A dwelling is a home — where someone lives. Houses, apartments, and condos are all dwellings. If you know that to dwell means to live somewhere, then the meaning of dwelling won't be a surprise: it's an abode, domicile, or home. Your dwelling might be a house or an apartment. Tents, trailers, and igloos are all dwellings. Anything people live in is a dwelling. If you have no dwelling, then you have no shelter and you're probably homeless.
Vocabulary lists containing dwelling
Christmas Carol Vocab: A Lyrical Lexicon
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There's No Word Like Home
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30 GRE Words Beginning with "D"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Mary Duggan said Lion Green Road was a project "about the culture of dwelling"
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
Rumination refers to repeatedly dwelling on distressing thoughts, worries, or negative experiences.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 9, 2026
Part of this resilience can be traced to the enduring Jewish practices for mourning—practices that focus on dwelling with the loss, not trying immediately to move past it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
Rather than dwelling on the absence of a right hand, Fontaine saw something wondrous coming out of Abbott’s left hand — a cut fastball.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2026
By 1910, of the thirty thousand people dwelling in Boston’s North End, more than twenty-eight thousand were Italians.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
Permits for build multifamily dwellings drove the rise, increasing 23.8% during the month, with Ontario leading gains by seven provinces and two territories.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
As the fire raged, mother and son used garden hoses to defend their property as nearby dwellings were torched.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
As a result, builders pulled back from starter homes and other dwellings typically used for entry-level homeownership and prioritized building units for rent.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
The government previously estimated that England alone needs another 300,000 dwellings per year to keep up with population change and our preference for living in smaller households.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
The others may walk free for a while, until we come nearer to our dwellings, down in Egladil, in the Angle between the waters.’
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
