landlord
Americannoun
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landlords
plural
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a person or organization that owns and leases apartments to others.
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a person who owns and leases land, buildings, etc.
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a person who owns or runs an inn, lodging house, etc.
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a landowner.
noun
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a man who owns and leases property
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a man who owns or runs a lodging house, pub, etc
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archaic the lord of an estate
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of landlord
before 1000; Middle English; Old English landhlāford. See land, lord
Explanation
If you lease an apartment, the person to whom you pay rent is your landlord. A landlord owns a house, building, or property and rents it out to other people. Many people have landlords they call when their drains are clogged and mail their rent checks to on the first of each month. Business owners often have landlords too, who own their retail or office spaces. Men and women can both be landlords, although you can also call a female landlord a landlady. The concept of a landlord goes back to feudalism — the lord part comes from "Lord of the Manor."
Vocabulary lists containing landlord
Chinese History - Introductory
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Little Richard (1932–2020): Tribute List
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Chinese History - Middle School and High School
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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:
The only person who saw her those two days was her landlord.
From Salon ● Oct. 10, 2026
Tishman Speyer, a commercial landlord, said it and other investors will inject $235 million into the property to refurbish its aging interior and exterior.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
Lever said her daughter had visited her social landlord to say she was in danger but had been told she did not meet the criteria for emergency housing.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026
Being a landlord is work, and you may have a long snag list.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026
“Your appetite’s been touched like by your accident,” said the landlord, glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat.
From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
Renters could also wind up paying more after landlords pass along rising costs, Berner said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
In Maryland, Grant Samms has found that the people who live in his community don’t want people to be pushed out of town by rent-gouging landlords.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
Raman has talked up her work enacting new renter protections, narrowing the ability of landlords to evict tenants and winning approval of a 4% cap on annual rent increases in rent-stabilized buildings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
He says some councils don't even know who the landlords are.
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2026
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, landlords in central and Southern China had an almost completely hands-off relationship with their tenants: they would collect a fixed rent and let farmers go about their business.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
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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.
