household
Americannoun
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households
plural
adjective
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of or relating to a household.
household furniture.
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for use in maintaining a home, especially for use in cooking, cleaning, laundering, repairing, etc., in the home.
a household bleach.
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common or usual; ordinary.
noun
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the people living together in one house collectively
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(modifier) of, relating to, or used in the running of a household; domestic
household management
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of household
First recorded in 1350–1400, household is from the Middle English word houshold. See house, hold 1
Explanation
How many people does your house hold? That’s your household! A household refers to a family or group of people living together. It’s a social unit under one roof. All the people living in your house, including servants, make up your household. Don’t have any servants? Well, your roommates count as part of your household, too. In the middle of the night, your household might be asleep. Your household income could determine whether or not you get the pool in the backyard. Household can also be an adjective to describe — you guessed it — things that are in your house, like household appliances or household furniture.
Vocabulary lists containing household
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:
In many remote places lacking accessible shops, Russians depend on them for much of their clothes and household appliances.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026
“That would push household bills much higher in January, keeping inflation sticky in 2027.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
These include startups that have become household names, like Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as the research arms of established tech firms like Alphabet’s Google.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
In May 2019, a typical household making the median income of about $66,000 could afford a median-priced home in St. Louis at $185,000 with an interest rate of 4.1%.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 22, 2026
It’s Saturday morning, better known as cleaning day in the Williams household.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
About 13,000 to 17,000 households in the neighborhood around the GKN Aerospace facility had to evacuate over five days, the district attorney’s office said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026
The indicator’s theoretical rationale is that households are late to jump on the market’s bandwagon, and are therefore most bullish at or near tops and most bearish at or near bottoms.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 24, 2026
Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has seen growth stall as households and businesses pay some of the highest electricity bills in the world.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
Research reveals about half of Australian households feed wild birds, with many people doing so daily.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 24, 2026
Along the way, he’d filled households like ours with a new and profound level of hope and excitement, even if in our hearts we understood that he was a long shot’s long shot.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Definitions 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.
