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:
She's talking about the concept of the "mental load" - the burden of planning, organising, remembering and anticipating tasks that keep a household running.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026
Moonshot’s Kimi family of models become a household name among a global class of software engineers globally, the power users driving the AI boom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
Whatever happens, the contradictions in the Vance household aren’t going away.
From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2026
Soon Alice and Danny connect the victim’s father to a conspiracy akin to the one that made Jeffrey Epstein a household name.
From Salon ● Sep. 3, 2026
Soon enough, there’s a full household of noisy little Florentines.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
The number of Gen Z households with a pet was up 43% last year compared with 2023, according to the American Pet Products Association.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
Only two-thirds of people in Nepal had access to electricity in 2010, and even connected households would face power cuts for up to 16 hours a day.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
For low-income households, any uptick in grocery prices will stretch already strained budgets, while wealthier consumers may not notice the change.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
Roughly 83% of adults with at least $100,000 in annual household income have a retirement-savings plan, significantly higher than the 28% rate among those in households earning less than $50,000 a year, Gallup says.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026
The pitiful sounds coming from the circus and the sight of dead fever victims did not exactly “dispel the gloom” of the households nearby.
From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy
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.
