homestead

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A house and the land and buildings around it, especially on a farm.

   The family had lived on the same homestead for three generations.

2. 2
   verb

   To settle on a piece of land and build a home and farm on it.

   In the nineteenth century, thousands of settlers moved west to homestead the open plains.

From Middle English hamstede, hemstede (attested in placenames), from Old English hāmstede (“homestead”), from Proto-West Germanic *haimastadi (“homestead”). By surface analysis, home + stead. Cognate with Old Frisian hāmstede, hēmstede (“homestead”), Dutch heemstede (“homestead”), German Heimstatt, Heimstätte (“homestead”), Swedish hemstad (“homestead”), Old Icelandic heimstǫð (“homestead”). Doublet of Hampstead and Hempstead.

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