A house is a home, building or structure the primary function of which is to be occupied for habitation by humans or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to complex structures composed of many systems. English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home".
The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households may be other social groups, organizations or individuals.
Read more about House: Etymology, Construction, Found Materials, Identifying Houses, Animal Houses, Houses and Symbolism
Famous quotes containing the word house:
“In my grandmother’s house there was always chicken soup
And talk of the old country—mud and boards,
Poverty,
The snow falling down and necks of lovers.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Instinct.—When our house burns down, we even forget our lunch.—Yes, but we go back to it later in the ashes.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)