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What Does Home Mean to You

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Updated: 6 November, 2023

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“What I love most about my home is who I share it with.” “There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.” “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”

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Works Cited

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press.
Boyd, H. W., & Ray, M. J. (Eds.). (2019). Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives. Policy Press.
Casey, E. S. (2000). Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Indiana University Press.
Clark, C., & Murrell, S. A. (Eds.). (2008). Laughter, Pain, and Wonder: Shakespeare's Comedies and the Audience in the Playhouse. University of Delaware Press.
Heidegger, M. (2010). Building, Dwelling, Thinking. In Poetry, Language, Thought (pp. 145-161). Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Kusenbach, M. (2003). Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool. Ethnography, 4(3), 455-485.
Moore, L. J. (2000). Space, Text, and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. Routledge.
Rapport, N., & Dawson, A. (Eds.). (1998). Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement. Berg Publishers.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
Seamon, D. (Ed.). (2015). Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Synergistic Dynamism of Place. Routledge.

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The given prompt: Is it a physical space, a feeling, or something entirely different?

When we think of the word “home,” it often evokes an image of a physical dwelling, with walls, a roof, and a comforting familiarity. However, delve a little deeper, and it becomes evident that the concept of home transcends bricks and mortar. In a world where people move, travel, and constantly adapt, the definition of home has beautifully morphed and expanded.

At its most basic level, yes, a home is a tangible space. It’s where one resides, keeps personal belongings, and returns to after a day’s work or travel. This physical space offers shelter, protection, and often a sense of ownership. It’s where meals are shared, memories are made, and seasons are witnessed. For many, the attachment to this space is profound, rooted in a sense of stability and permanence.

However, for others, especially those who have journeyed across cities, countries, or continents, home isn’t just a fixed address. It’s a feeling, an emotion that arises in spaces other than their birthplace or original dwelling. For a student studying abroad, home might be the dormitory where friendships are forged. For a traveler, it might be the camp under the starry sky or the cozy hostel room in a distant land. The emotion of home travels, adapts, and nestles in varied spaces.

Beyond the physical and emotional realms, home often takes on symbolic meanings. It can represent one’s roots, culture, or heritage. For an immigrant, home might be the melodies of native songs, the flavors of traditional recipes, or the stories passed down generations. Even miles away from their birth land, these cultural anchors offer a bridge, connecting them to the essence of home.

There’s also an introspective dimension to home. It’s the sanctuary within, the inner realm where one’s true self resides. In moments of solitude or reflection, individuals often retreat to this inner home, seeking solace, clarity, or simply a break from the external world’s cacophony. This internal sanctuary is as vital as any external dwelling, offering a space for rest, rejuvenation, and introspection.

Interestingly, relationships too can be homes. The embrace of a loved one, the understanding gaze of a friend, or the playful nudge of a pet – in these interactions, many find the warmth and comfort typically associated with home. Here, home is not bound by walls but by bonds of love, care, and understanding.

In today’s dynamic world, where change seems to be the only constant, the concept of home is both grounding and liberating. Grounding, because it offers a sense of belonging, and liberating, because it’s no longer confined to a singular space or definition.

In conclusion, home, in its rich, multifaceted glory, is a mosaic of spaces, feelings, memories, and relationships. Whether it’s the house at the end of the street, the aroma of a childhood dish, the memories of a cherished place, or the quiet space within, home is where the heart finds its anchor. And in this heart-space, whether tangible or intangible, lies the essence of comfort, belonging, and love.

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Essays About Home: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Writing essays about home depicts familial encounters that influence our identity. Discover our guide with examples and prompts to assist you with your next essay.

The literal meaning of home is a place where you live. It’s also called a domicile where people permanently reside, but today, people have different definitions for it. A home is where we most feel comfortable. It’s a haven, a refuge that provides security and protects us without judgment.

Parents or guardians do their best to make a home for their children. They strive to offer their kids a stable environment so they can grow into wonderful adults. Dissecting what a home needs to ensure a family member feels safe is a vital part of writing essays about home.

5 Essay Examples

1. the unique feeling of home by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 2. where i call home by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 3. a place i call home by anonymous on toppr.com, 4. the meaning of home by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. what makes a house a home for me by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 1. true meaning of home, 2. the difference between a home and a house, 3. homes and emotions, 4. making our house feel like home, 6. home as a vital part of our lives, 7. a home for a kid.

“Nowadays, as I moved out, the place feels alien since I spend the whole time in the house during my visits to my parents. They treat me like a guest in their home – in a good sense; they try to be attentive to me and induce dialogue since I stay there for a short time, and they want to extract the maximum of their need for interaction with me.”

In this essay, a visit to the author’s parents’ house made them realize the many things they missed. They also can’t help but compare it to their current home. The writer states family conflict as the reason for their moving out and realizes how fast they adapted to their new environment.

Returning to their childhood home brings out mixed emotions as they ponder over the lasting influence of their past on their present personality. The author recognizes the importance of the experiences they carry wherever they go. In the end, the writer says that a home is anywhere they can belong to themselves and interact with those they hold dear. You might be interested in these essays about city life .

“The noteworthy places where I lived are the places I have made my home: where I can walk around with a birds’ nest on my head and a pair of old sweatpants in the middle of summer, where I can strip myself bear of superficial emotions…”

The essay starts with vivid descriptions of the author’s home, letting the reader feel like they are in the same place as the narrator. The author also considers their grandmother’s and friend’s houses his home and shares why they feel this way.

“My home is important to me because for better or worse, it helps me belong. It makes me understand my place in time and connect with the world and the universe at large. Thus, I am grateful to have a place I can call home.”

In this essay, the author is straightforward in sharing the features of their home life, including where their house is located, who lives in it, and other specific details that make it a home. It’s an ancestral home with vintage furniture that stands strong despite age.

The writer boasts of their unrestricted use of the rooms and how they love every part of it. However, their best memories are linked to the house’s terrace, where their family frequently spends time together.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about dream house .

“Home is a word that means a lot in the life of every person. For some, this is a place to come after hard work to relax and feel comfortable. For others, this is a kind of intermediate point from which they can set off towards adventure.”

A home is where a person spends most of their life, but in this essay, the writer explains that the definition varies per an individual’s outlook. Thus, the piece incorporates various definitions and concepts from other writers. One of them is Veronica Greenwood , who associates homes with a steaming bowl of ramen because both provide warmth, comfort, and tranquility. The author concludes by recognizing individuals’ ever-changing feelings and emotions and how these changes affect their perception of the concept of a home.

“It is where the soul is… what makes my house a home is walking through the front door on a Friday evening after praying Zuhr prayer in the masjid and coming back to the aroma of freshly cooked delicious biryani in the kitchen because my mom knows it’s my favorite meal.”

This essay reflects on the factors that shape a house to become a home. These factors include providing security, happiness, and comfort. The author explains that routine household activities such as cooking at home, watching children, and playing games significantly contribute to how a home is created. In the end, the writer says that a house becomes a home when you produce special memories with the people you love.

7 Prompts for Essays About Home

The definition of a home varies depending on one’s perspective. Use this prompt to discuss what the word “home” means to you. Perhaps home is filled with memories, sentimental items, or cozy decor, or maybe home is simply where your family is. Write a personal essay with your experiences and add the fond memories you have with your family home.

Check out our guide on how to write a personal essay .

Home and house are two different terms with deeper meanings. However, they are used interchangeably in verbal and written communication. A house is defined as a structure existing in the physical sense. Meanwhile, a home is where people feel like they belong and are free to be themselves.

In your essay, compare and contrast these words and discuss if they have the same meaning or not. Add some fun to your writing by interviewing people to gather opinions on the difference between these two words.

The emotions that we associate with our home can be influenced by our upbringing. In this essay, discuss how your childhood shaped how you view your home and include the reasons why. Split this essay into sections, each new section describing a different memory in your house. Make sure to include personal experiences and examples to support your feelings.

For example, if you grew up in a home that you associate positive memories with, you will have a happy and peaceful association with your home. However, if your upbringing had many challenging and stressful times, you may have negative emotions tied to the home.

The people inside our home play a significant role in how a house becomes a home. Parents, siblings, and pets are only some of those that influence a home. In this prompt, write about the items in your home, the people, and the activities that have made your house a home.

Describe your home in detail to make the readers understand your home life. Talk about the physical characteristics of your house, what the people you live with make you feel, and what you look forward to every time you visit your home. You can also compare it to your current home. For example, you can focus your essay on the differences between your childhood home and the place you moved in to start your independent life.

Home is the one place we always go back to; even if we visit other places, our home is waiting for our return. In this prompt, provide relevant statistics about how much time a person spends at home and ensure to consider relevant factors such as their profession and age group. Using these statistics, explain the importance of a home to the general population, including the indications of homelessness.

There are 135,000 children adopted in the US each year. These children become orphans for various reasons and are adopted by their guardians to support and guide them through life. For this prompt, find statistics showing the number of unaccompanied and homeless children.

Then, write down the government programs and organizations that aim to help these kids. In the later part of your essay, you can discuss tips on how a foster family can make their foster kids feel at home. For help picking your next essay topic, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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The Definition of Home

Be it ever so humble, it’s more than just a place. It’s also an idea—one where the heart is

Verlyn Klinkenborg

When did “home” become embedded in human consciousness? Is our sense of home instinctive? Are we denning animals or nest builders, or are we, at root, nomadic? For much of the earliest history of our species, home may have been nothing more than a small fire and the light it cast on a few familiar faces, surrounded perhaps by the ancient city-mounds of termites. But whatever else home is—and however it entered our consciousness—it’s a way of organizing space in our minds. Home is home, and everything else is not-home. That’s the way the world is constructed.

Not that you can’t feel “at home” in other places. But there’s a big psychological difference between feeling at home and being home. Feeling at home on the Tiwi Islands or in Bangalore or Vancouver (if you are not native) is simply a way of saying that the not-home-ness of those places has diminished since you first arrived. Some people, as they move through their lives, rediscover home again and again. Some people never find another after once leaving home. And, of course, some people never leave the one home they’ve always known. In America, we don’t know quite what to say about those people.

Homesick children know how sharp the boundary between home and not-home can be because they suffer from the difference, as if it were a psychological thermocline. I know because I was one of them. I felt a deep kinship almost everywhere in the small Iowa town I grew up in. But spending the night away from home, at a sleepover with friends, made every street, every house seem alien. And yet there was no rejoicing when I got back home in the morning. Home was as usual. That was the point—home is a place so profoundly familiar you don’t even have to notice it. It’s everywhere else that takes noticing.

In humans, the idea of home almost completely displaces the idea of habitat. It’s easy to grasp the fact that a vireo’s nest is not the same as her habitat and that her habitat is her true home. The nest is a temporary annual site for breeding, useful only as long as there are young to raise. But we are such generalists—able to live in so many places—that “habitat,” when applied to humans, is nearly always a metaphor. To say, “My home is my habitat” is true and untrue at the same time.

Yet our psychological habitat is shaped by what you might call the magnetic property of home, the way it aligns everything around us. Perhaps you remember a moment, coming home from a trip, when the house you call home looked, for a moment, like just another house on a street full of houses. For a fraction of a second, you could see your home as a stranger might see it. But then the illusion faded and your house became home again. That, I think, is one of the most basic meanings of home—a place we can never see with a stranger’s eyes for more than a moment.

And there’s something more. When my father died, my brothers and sisters and I went back to his house, where he’d lived alone. It wasn’t only his absence we felt. It was as though something had vanished from every object in the house. They had, in fact, become merely objects. The person whose heart and mind could bind them into a single thing—a home—had gone.

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The Meaning of Home Essay

Home is a word that means a lot in the life of every person. For some, this is a place to come after hard work to relax and feel comfortable. For others, this is a kind of intermediate point from which they can set off towards adventure. Still, others believe that the home is not some specific place but where the closest and dearest people gather. However, everyone’s life should have a home as a place to reboot, energize and comfort. This allows people to stay afloat even in the most challenging times and know that there is a safe corner in this world where they can ride out the storm.

Various authors put different emotions and thoughts into the concept of home. For example, Joan Didion (1967) has a particular view of the concept of home. She believes that home is the place where her closest and dearest people are. She loves to visit her family to feel a sense of unity and be close to loved ones. In this house, time seems to slow down, and no matter what happens in life, home is always a place where she can meet people that are ready to support and understand her. This view of a home is quite common: “home is where the heart is.”

Having close people is an integral part of everyone’s life, even from a biological perspective. People need to feel like they belong to a specific group to always be able to receive support. In addition, no matter how the family criticizes us, it still accepts us with all the shortcomings and rash actions. We are part of a family, so it will be difficult to “break away” from it. However, it is necessary to remember that this is a two-way communication and maintain it. Not only seek help from relatives in difficult times but also help them if necessary. This is what will help build a secure family-related feeling of “home.”

Some people associate home with warm memories of the past, while in the present, this concept becomes, perhaps, more blurred. For example, for Veronique Greenwood (2014), the home was strongly associated with a warm, steaming bowl of ramen. Every day at school, she skipped lunch to read more books and came home in the late afternoon. Hunger “overtook” her, and every day she saved herself by making herself a bowl of hot ramen soup. She began to associate this warmth and satiety with a feeling of calmness, security, and comfort – at home.

No matter how hard life is, some people may indeed have some tiny detail that becomes reliable support. Thus, for example, a warm soup is one of the few things that could support the girl. However, it helped her survive all the difficulties of adolescence. She knew she had a home, a place filled with warmth and comfort. Thanks to this support, she was able to find her place in life and grow up as a worthy person.

Pico Iyer (2013) reveals an exciting and unusual vision of the home in his speech. He argues that the home cannot be a specific point on the map for many people since people and their lives are constantly changing. For some, the parental house becomes home; for others – a favorite place to travel; for some – a country to which they dream of moving all their lives. People collect the concept of a home throughout their lives, and it becomes a mosaic made up of diverse parts that are unique to everyone.

As a result, the home becomes not what is at a certain point on the map but what leaves the greatest response in the soul. Each person’s experience is unique, so everyone has an unusual and unique feeling of home in their hearts. Thanks to this, we recognize the most important places, events, and people in our life. It is what becomes our “home” that forms the basis of our personalities and influences us.

For me, the concept of “home” is now most closely related to the idea of the parental home. My family lives there, and I feel our closeness; I understand that I can always get help, support, and care in this place. I know that the most comfortable atmosphere of trust and warmth is there. However, I understand that my thoughts and feelings about the concept of home can change dramatically over time. For example, if I move to another city or start my own family, I will feel this concept differently. However, I know that my family’s home will always remain dear to me; that is, it will still be an essential component of the concept of “home.” Therefore, you must always carefully listen to yourself, look for your home, and collect it bit by bit from different parts of life. This will help you feel calmer and know that in some place, someone is waiting for you with love and support.

Didion, J. (1967). On going home.

Greenwood, V. (2014). How ramen got me through adolescence . The New York Times Magazine. Web.

Iyer, P. (2013). Where is home? [Video]. TED. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). The Meaning of Home. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-home/

"The Meaning of Home." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-home/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Meaning of Home'. 1 November.

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IvyPanda . "The Meaning of Home." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-home/.

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Why is home so important to us?

Home: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday , subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS , and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook . This series is also available online , and you can recommend it to your local librarian .

By Michael Allen Fox
December 30 th 2016

“Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” “Home is where the heart is.” These well-known expressions indicate that home is somewhere that is both desirable and that exists in the mind’s eye as much as in a particular physical location. Across cultures and over the centuries people of varied means have made homes for themselves and for those they care about. Humans have clearly evolved to be home builders, homemakers, and home-nesters. Dwellings that are recognizable as homes have been found everywhere that archaeologists and anthropologists have looked, representing every era of history and prehistory.

Home has always been a gathering place, shelter, and sanctuary, providing escape from the busyness and intrusiveness of the world. Much thought about, treasured, and longed for as an anchor of our existence, home has been the subject of abundant written works and other cultural products. We might reasonably suppose, therefore, that home is a readily understood concept and source of universally positive feelings. On closer investigation, however, neither of these assumptions is found to be true. The concept of home is constructed differently by different languages; dwellings are built and lived in very differently by diverse groups; and many individuals have negative or mixed emotions in regard to their experiences of home life. To embrace all of the nuances of meaning, outlook, lifestyle, and feeling that attach to home is a daunting task, but it greatly enriches our perspective on the world.

For many, home is (or was) a loving, supportive environment in which to grow up and discover oneself. Most people will have more than one home in a lifetime, and if the original one was unhappy, there is always the opportunity to do better when creating a new home. This may not as easy as it sounds for those whose memory of home is of an oppressive or abusive situation from which escape is (or was) a desperate imperative. But even when it is a peaceful, loving environment, home is, for all of us, a political sphere wherein we must negotiate rights and privileges, make compromises, and seek empowerment through self-affirmation.

As an ideal that exists in the imagination, and in dreams and wish fulfilments, home carries many and varied symbolic meanings embedded in the physical design of houses and projected onto them by the belief systems within which our lives play out. The landscape, geopolitical location, the people who live with us, and material possessions with which we furnish our home space are essential aspects of the place where we dwell. Complex interactions with all of these elements give definition to home as we see it. And as we define home, we also define ourselves in relation to it.

In recent times, home has become a more problematic notion, not only because of everyday encounters with our homeless fellow citizens, but also because of the great increase in immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and victims of natural disasters in many parts of the world. Given the strong meanings and emotional associations that home has for us, those who have lost their homes and the things they most valued, or who have never had a proper home in the first place, face psychological impacts and identity crises of massive proportions. Being without a home is devastating on personal, social, and many other levels. The issues raised by homelessness exist on a world scale, and will be aggravated by climate change and rising populations. In the end, they can only be dealt with through united effort driven by compassion and dedication.

On the hopeful side of things, many immigrants have been welcomed into new countries for some time, and have made successful and rewarding lives there for themselves, as well as broadening the experience and culture of their adopted homelands. Living in the space age and the age of greater environmental awareness, we are also collectively making the first steps toward appreciating the Earth we share as our ultimate home, and as the place above all that we need to respect and protect. Thinking about home takes us into our inner selves, to be sure, but it also encourages us to look at things in their totality.

Why is home so important to us, then? Because for better or worse, by presence or absence, it is a crucial point of reference—in memory, feeling, and imagination—for inventing the story of ourselves, our life-narrative, for understanding our place in time. But it is also a vital link through which we connect with others and with the world and the universe at large.

Featured image credit: Home building residence by image4you. Public Domain via Pixabay .

Michael Allen Fox is Adjunct Professor, School of Humanities, University of New England, Australia, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His main research interests are in the areas of nineteenth-century European philosophy, existentialism, environmental philosophy, ethics and animals, and philosophy of peace. He is the author of Home: A Very Short Introduction .

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The Meaning of "Home"

Four approaches to studying "home" show how home affects our experiences..

Posted November 4, 2021 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

“Home” researchers might study environmental psychology, memory and attachment theory, a hierarchy of needs, and identity.
Resources guide us toward different ways of thinking about, understanding, and developing notions of “home.”
"Home" and "family" are not necessarily synonymous; nor are they always "happy".

When you ask yourself, “What does home mean to me?," how does your inner voice respond? Has your answer to the question changed as your life and circumstances have changed? Mine certainly has, as I recently described in an essay on my personal blog, "Love Is Real."

I wonder how many people remember learning to read and to print and then endlessly writing out their name, street address, town or city, state, perhaps a zip code (those did not exist when I was a child), country, continent, and then maybe “World,” possibly followed by “Universe.” What is this urge to situate ourselves in space, in a geographic location, especially one centered around our earliest memories of where we lived?

Four ways of looking at these questions ask if “home” is defined by the following:

Environmental cues and their impact on our perception, cognition , emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
A hierarchy of needs and the context in which the most basic of them are met.
Emotional memories and fantasies along with their impact, including memory -driven attachment scripts that a person wants to implement or avoid.
Our sense of identity and belonging, extending to and beyond group memberships.

But, first, before we dive into the topic, a caveat. In the spring of 1986 or 1987, the Whitney Museum of American Art branch in the Champion building in Stamford, Connecticut, offered the public a gripping look into the dark side of “home.” Noting that much media and many people associate home with positive experiences — often idealized ones — the curators chose to acknowledge that the reality often fails to match a desire or wish. Artists depicted homes plagued by violence, addiction , exploitation, chaos, and ill will.

These are the dwellings that easily produce traumatized children and eventually adults, those studied in Adverse Childhood Experiences research , who are at risk for developmental disruptions as well as emotional, cognitive, physical, and relationship problems. The consequences are tragic and many — see the list of resources curated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . “Home” is not necessarily a synonym for “happy place.”

4 Perspectives on Home

1. Environmental psychology . Research on person–environment relationships can include the study of spaces where people dwell. Environmental psychologists have documented qualities to which homes expose people, like noise levels, toxins, emotional climates, crowding (or its absence), and their impact on all aspects of experience, from the personal (biological, cognitive, emotional, behavioral) to the social. Organizational psychologists often use or adapt these methods and the literature to maximize an organization’s goals . Another branch, architectural psychology, focuses on the impact of design to amplify positive or minimize negative impact. Applications range from single-person dwellings to community institutions, from a treehouse to a hospital.

Around the world, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, people became interested in homes in new ways. They sought housing opportunities that would provide more inside space and greater access to the outdoors. Alternately, isolated living “pods” popped up, housing university students banished from their dorm, families educating small children, people yearning to be in a situation that included a “safe” community.

2. A hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind as we examine what people who moved during the pandemic were searching for: greater attention to meeting survival needs for shelter, nutrition , hygiene, safety, work and play, and interpersonal needs for contact, communication, companionship, and belonging.

When social interaction changed dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, external sources of

spiritual and cultural nourishment decreased, and countless people, rather than searching for an alternative living arrangement like a different residence or a pod, turned their attention to their current homes, what they might potentially provide, and what they required in maintenance. Countless practical modifications were put in place. They expanded exponentially as the number of people in a living space grew. “Family” definitions broadened to include those related by blood, marriage , or choice, with “home” embracing those who lived together and intended to continue living together following the crisis, at least according to the American Red Cross.

3. Attachment and memory . A broader definition of “family” makes room for another aspect of “home,” that which sees home as the center for forging and nourishing human attachment bonds. "Home" includes primary locations where early memories and their emotions result in attachment scripts and their consequences. A sense of belonging securely or less so persists into adulthood or until changes in unconscious expectations make room for revised understanding. 1

Two more caveats: “Family” and “home” can be separate as well as associated, and they can be temporary. Long-distance relationships are currently flourishing; those in them dwell apart. And, as mentioned above, “family” can refer to people who live together by choice and are not related by legal or blood bonds, at least for many purposes. Therefore, attachment-oriented researchers often focus on the symbiotic relationships of those who cohabit by choice.

In contrast, scholars who study migration more broadly emphasize the “push” away from a current residence and “pull” toward a new one. Attachment to either "homeland" can be weak or fierce. Along these lines, researchers might investigate places in which basic cultural beliefs are imprinted along with the geography of the location. 2 In both cases, culture and a sense of belonging (or not) are absorbed systemically and often unconsciously, as suggested by Bronfenbrenner's theory of ecological development.

4. Identity and possible selves. From a personality perspective, we craft an identity from internal

experiences like temperament, needs, and desires, as well as through our relationships with others and with the larger social and cultural systems in which we are embedded. Our own imagination creates what Hazel Markus has labeled “ possible selves ,” imagery of who we might become. From this perspective, “home” is one context in which such creation can take place. It can become an expression of personal choices and aspirations as well as history.

In a different approach, family process psychologists often talk about ways in which people use or construct boundaries , connections, and communications. Space is both material and metaphor. It represents how a small group of related individuals expresses values and their implementation.

What has “home” been for you? Has its meaning changed during your adult life?

2021 Copyright Roni Beth Tower

1. Simpson, J. A. & Rholes, W. S. (Eds.) (1998). Attachment Theory and Close Relationships . New York: Guilford Press.

2. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and Place. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Roni Beth Tower, PhD, a retired clinical, research and academic psychologist, earned a BA from Barnard (Religion), her PhD from Yale, and did postdoctoral work in epidemiology and public health at Yale Medical School.

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How to Write a Definition Essay

A definition essay can be deceivingly difficult to write. This type of paper requires you to write a personal yet academic definition of one specific word. The definition must be thorough and lengthy. It is essential that you choose a word that will give you plenty to write about, and there are a few standard tactics you can use to elaborate on the term. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when writing a definition essay.

Part 1 of 3: Choosing the Right Word

1: choose an abstract word with a complex meaning. [1].

A simple word that refers to a concrete word will not give you much to write about, but a complex word that refers to an abstract concept provides more material to explore.

Typically, nouns that refer to a person, place, or thing are too simple for a definition essay. Nouns that refer to an idea work better, however, as do most adjectives.
For example, the word “house” is fairly simple and an essay written around it may be dull. By switching to something slightly more abstract like “home,” however, you can play around with the definition more. A “home” is a concept, and there are many elements involved in the creation of a “home.” In comparison, a “house” is merely a structure.

2: Make sure that the word is disputable.

Aside from being complex, the word should also refer to something that can mean different things to different people.

A definition essay is somewhat subjective by nature since it requires you to analyze and define a word from your own perspective. If the answer you come up with after analyzing a word is the same answer anyone else would come up with, your essay may appear to lack depth.

3: Choose a word you have some familiarity with.

Dictionary definitions can only tell you so much. Since you need to elaborate on the word you choose to define, you will need to have your own base of knowledge or experience with the concept you choose.

For instance, if you have never heard the term “pedantic,” your understanding of the word will be limited. You can introduce yourself to the word for your essay, but without previous understanding of the concept, you will not know if the definition you describe is truly fitting.

4: Read the dictionary definition.

While you will not be relying completely on the dictionary definition for your essay, familiarizing yourself with the official definition will allow you to compare your own understanding of the concept with the simplest, most academic explanation of it.

As an example, one definition of “friend” is “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.” [2] Your own ideas or beliefs about what a “friend” really is likely include much more information, but this basic definition can present you with a good starting point in forming your own.

5: Research the word’s origins.

Look up your chosen word in the Oxford English Dictionary or in another etymology dictionary. [3]

These sources can tell you the history behind a word, which can provide further insight on a general definition as well as information about how a word came to mean what it means today.

Part 2 of 3: Potential Elements of an Effective Definition

1: write an analysis. [4].

Separate a word into various parts. Analyze and define each part in its own paragraph.

You can separate “return” into “re-” and “turn.” The word “friendship” can be separated into “friend” and “ship.”
In order to analyze each portion of a word, you will still need to use additional defining tactics like negation and classification.
Note that this tactic only works for words that contain multiple parts. The word “love,” for instance, cannot be broken down any further. If defining “platonic love,” though, you could define both “platonic” and “love” separately within your essay.

2: Classify the term.

Specify what classes and parts of speech a word belongs to according to a standard dictionary definition.

While this information is very basic and dry, it can provide helpful context about the way that a given word is used.

3: Compare an unfamiliar term to something familiar.

An unfamiliar or uncommon concept can be explained using concepts that are more accessible to the average person.

Many people have never heard of the term “confrere,” for instance. One basic definition is “a fellow member of a profession, fraternity, etc.” As such, you could compare “confrere” with “colleague,” which is a similar yet more familiar concept. [5]

4: Provide traditional details about the term.

Explain any physical characteristics or traditional thoughts used to describe your term of choice.

The term “home” is often visualized physically as a house or apartment. In more abstract terms, “home” is traditionally thought to be a warm, cozy, and safe environment. You can include all of these features in a definition essay on “home.”

5: Use examples to illustrate the meaning.

People often relate to stories and vivid images, so using a fitting story or image that relates to the term can be used in clarifying an abstract, formless concept.

In a definition essay about “kindness,” for example, you could write about an act of kindness you recently witnessed. Someone who mows the lawn of an elderly neighbor is a valid example, just as someone who gave you an encouraging word when you were feeling down might be.

6: Use negation to explain what the term does not mean.

If a term is often misused or misunderstood, mentioning what it is not is an effective way to bring the concept into focus.

A common example would be the term “courage.” The term is often associated with a lack of fear, but many will argue that “courage” is more accurately described as acting in spite of fear.

7: Provide background information.

This is when your research about the etymology of a word will come in handy. Explain where the term originated and how it came to mean what it currently means.

Part 3 of 3: Definition Essay Structure

1: introduce the standard definition..

You need to clearly state what your word is along with its traditional or dictionary definition in your introductory paragraph.

By opening with the dictionary definition of your term, you create context and a basic level of knowledge about the word. This will allow you to introduce and elaborate on your own definition.
This is especially significant when the traditional definition of your term varies from your own definition in notable ways.

2: Define the term in your own words in your thesis.

Your actual thesis statement should define the term in your own words.

Keep the definition in your thesis brief and basic. You will elaborate on it more in the body of your paper.
Avoid using passive phrases involving the word “is” when defining your term. The phrases “is where” and “is when” are especially clunky. [6]
Do not repeat part of the defined term in your definition.

3: Separate different parts of the definition into separate paragraphs.

Each tactic or method used to define your term should be explored in a separate paragraph.

Note that you do not need to use all the possible methods of defining a term in your essay. You should use a variety of different methods in order to create a full, well-rounded picture of the term, but some tactics will work great with some terms but not with others.

4: Conclude with a summary of your main points.

Briefly summarize your main points around the start of your concluding paragraph.

This summary does not need to be elaborate. Usually, looking at the topic sentence of each body paragraph is a good way to form a simple list of your main points.
You can also draw the essay to a close by referring to phrases or images evoked in your introduction.

5: Mention how the definition has affected you, if desired.

If the term you define plays a part in your own life and experiences, your final concluding remarks are a good place to briefly mention the role it plays.

Relate your experience with the term to the definition you created for it in your thesis. Avoid sharing experiences that relate to the term but contradict everything you wrote in your essay.

Sources and Citations

http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/Definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friend?s=t
http://www.etymonline.com/
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/confrere?s=t
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/definition.htm
How to Write a Definition Essay. Provided by : WikiHow. Located at : http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Definition-Essay . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Table of Contents

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

Overview of Instructor Resources

An Overview of the Writing Process

Introduction to the Writing Process
Introduction to Writing
Your Role as a Learner
What is an Essay?
Reading to Write
Defining the Writing Process
Videos: Prewriting Techniques
Thesis Statements
Organizing an Essay
Creating Paragraphs
Conclusions
Editing and Proofreading
Matters of Grammar, Mechanics, and Style
Peer Review Checklist
Comparative Chart of Writing Strategies

Using Sources

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism
Formatting the Works Cited Page (MLA)
Citing Paraphrases and Summaries (APA)
APA Citation Style, 6th edition: General Style Guidelines

Definition Essay

Definitional Argument Essay
Critical Thinking
Video: Thesis Explained
Effective Thesis Statements
Student Sample: Definition Essay

Narrative Essay

Introduction to Narrative Essay
Student Sample: Narrative Essay
"Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
"Sixty-nine Cents" by Gary Shteyngart
Video: The Danger of a Single Story
How to Write an Annotation
How to Write a Summary
Writing for Success: Narration

Illustration/Example Essay

Introduction to Illustration/Example Essay
"She's Your Basic L.O.L. in N.A.D" by Perri Klass
"April & Paris" by David Sedaris
Writing for Success: Illustration/Example
Student Sample: Illustration/Example Essay

Compare/Contrast Essay

Introduction to Compare/Contrast Essay
"Disability" by Nancy Mairs
"Friending, Ancient or Otherwise" by Alex Wright
"A South African Storm" by Allison Howard
Writing for Success: Compare/Contrast
Student Sample: Compare/Contrast Essay

Cause-and-Effect Essay

Introduction to Cause-and-Effect Essay
"Cultural Baggage" by Barbara Ehrenreich
"Women in Science" by K.C. Cole
Writing for Success: Cause and Effect
Student Sample: Cause-and-Effect Essay

Argument Essay

Introduction to Argument Essay
Rogerian Argument
"The Case Against Torture," by Alisa Soloman
"The Case for Torture" by Michael Levin
How to Write a Summary by Paraphrasing Source Material
Writing for Success: Argument
Student Sample: Argument Essay
Grammar/Mechanics Mini-lessons
Mini-lesson: Subjects and Verbs, Irregular Verbs, Subject Verb Agreement
Mini-lesson: Sentence Types
Mini-lesson: Fragments I
Mini-lesson: Run-ons and Comma Splices I
Mini-lesson: Comma Usage
Mini-lesson: Parallelism
Mini-lesson: The Apostrophe
Mini-lesson: Capital Letters
Grammar Practice - Interactive Quizzes
De Copia - Demonstration of the Variety of Language
Style Exercise: Voice

The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much

There's a reason why the first thing we often ask someone when we meet them, right after we learn their name, is "where's home for you?"

My house is a shrine to my homes. There's a triptych of sunsets next to my bedroom door, dusk forever falling over the small Michigan town where I grew up, the beach next to my college dorm and Place de la Concorde in Paris, where I spent a cliché but nonetheless happy semester. And that's only the beginning. Typographic posters of Michigan and Chicago hang above my bed, a photo of taxis zooming around Manhattan sits atop my dresser and a postcard of my hometown's famous water tower is taped to my door. My roommate and I have an entire wall in our kitchen plastered with maps of places we've been, and twin Ferris wheels, one at Navy Pier, one at Place de la Concorde, are stacked on top of one another in my living room.

I considered each of those places my home at one time or another, whether it was for months or years. When laid out all together, the theme to my décor becomes painfully obvious, but why it was more important to me to display the places I've lived rather than pictures of friends, or favorite music or books, all of which are also meaningful, I couldn't initially say.

Susan Clayton, an environmental psychologist at the College of Wooster, says that for many people, their home is part of their self-definition, which is why we do things like decorate our houses and take care of our lawns. These large patches of vegetation serve little real purpose, but they are part of a public face people put on, displaying their home as an extension of themselves. It's hardly rare, though, in our mobile modern society, to accumulate several different homes over the course of a lifetime. So how does that affect our conception of ourselves?

For better or worse, the place where we grew up usually retains an iconic status, Clayton says. But while it's human nature to want to have a place to belong, we also want to be special, and defining yourself as someone who once lived somewhere more interesting than the suburbs of Michigan is one way to do that. "You might choose to identify as a person who used to live somewhere else, because it makes you distinctive," Clayton says. I know full well that living in Paris for three months doesn't make me a Parisian, but that doesn't mean there's not an Eiffel Tower on my shower curtain anyway.

We may use our homes to help distinguish ourselves, but the dominant Western viewpoint is that regardless of location, the individual remains unchanged. It wasn't until I stumbled across the following notion, mentioned in passing in a book about a Hindu pilgrimage by William S. Sax, that I began to question that idea: "People and the places where they reside are engaged in a continuing set of exchanges; they have determinate, mutual effects upon each other because they are part of a single, interactive system."

This is the conception of home held by many South Asians and it fascinated me so much that I set out to write this story. What I learned, in talking with Sax, is that while in the West we may feel sentimental or nostalgic attachment to the places we've lived, in the end we see them as separate from our inner selves. Most Westerners believe that "your psychology, and your consciousness and your subjectivity don't really depend on the place where you live," Sax says. "They come from inside -- from inside your brain, or inside your soul or inside your personality." But for many South Asian communities, a home isn't just where you are, it's who you are.

In the modern Western world, perceptions of home are consistently colored by factors of economy and choice. There's an expectation in our society that you'll grow up, buy a house, get a mortgage, and jump through all the financial hoops that home ownership entails, explains Patrick Devine-Wright, a professor in human geography at the University of Exeter. And it's true that part of why my home feels like mine is because I'm the one paying for it, not my parents, not a college scholarship. "That kind of economic system is predicated on marketing people to live in a different home, or a better home than the one they're in," Devine-Wright says. The endless options can leave us constantly wondering if there isn't some place with better schools, a better neighborhood, more green space, and on and on. We may leave a pretty good thing behind, hoping that the next place will be even more desirable.

In some ways, this mobility has become part of the natural course of a life. The script is a familiar one: you move out of your parents' house, maybe go to college, get a place of your own, get a bigger house when you have kids, then a smaller one when the kids move out. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Even if we did stay in one place, it's unlikely we would ever have the same deep attachment to our environment as those from some South Asian communities do. It just doesn't fit with our culture.

But in spite of everything -- in spite of the mobility, the individualism, and the economy -- on some level we do recognize the importance of place. The first thing we ask someone when we meet them, after their name, is where they are from, or the much more interestingly-phrased "where's home for you?" We ask, not just to place a pushpin for them in our mental map of acquaintances, but because we recognize that the answer tells us something important about them. My answer for "where are you from?" is usually Michigan, but "where's home for you?" is a little harder.

If home is where the heart is, then by its most literal definition, my home is wherever I am. I've always been liberal in my use of the word. If I'm going to visit my parents, I'm going home and if I'm returning to Chicago, I'm also going home. My host parents' apartment in Paris was home while I lived there, as was my college dorm and my aunt's place on the Upper West Side, where I stayed during my internship. And the truth is, the location of your heart, as well as the rest of your body, does affect who you are. The differences may seem trivial (a new subculture means new friends, more open spaces make you want to go outside more), but they can lead to lifestyle changes that are significant.

Memories, too, are cued by the physical environment. When you visit a place you used to live, these cues can cause you to revert back to the person you were when you lived there. The rest of the time, different places are kept largely separated in our minds. The more connections our brain makes to something, the more likely our everyday thoughts are to lead us there. But connections made in one place can be isolated from those made in another, so we may not think as often about things that happened for the few months we lived someplace else. Looking back, many of my homes feel more like places borrowed than places possessed, and while I sometimes sift through mental souvenirs of my time there, in the scope of a lifetime, I was only a tourist.

I can't possibly live everywhere I once labeled home, but I can frame these places on my walls. My decorations can serve as a reminder of the more adventurous person I was in New York, the more carefree person I was in Paris, and the more ambitious person I was in Michigan. I can't be connected with my home in the intense way South Asians are in Sax's book, but neither do I presume my personality to be context-free. No one is ever free from their social or physical environment. And whether or not we are always aware of it, a home is a home because it blurs the line between the self and the surroundings, and challenges the line we try to draw between who we are and where we are.

Image: romakoma/ Shutterstock .

Home Essay: The Main Points You Should Know About

The success of any academic writing is directly dependent on its topic. Once you choose an inappropriate topic, you are doomed to fail. Nobody wishes to read about irrelevant issues or those, which were already highlighted multiple times. In the meanwhile, a student may have no choice, and his/her academic supervisor will assign it. You are lucky if you are assigned an essay about home.

That is a real gift, which you cannot waste. This topic should be dear to everyone’s heart. Therefore, you will have enthusiasm and a positive attitude while you compose it. One may use a great variety of ideas concerning the particular topic. “Home” is the generalization. You may expose it as you wish.

It goes beyond all doubts that there are specific rules, which you should follow. Learn how to write an essay about home. We will help you in this matter. The first point is to define the difference between the words “home” and “house.” House is an apartment of different kinds, which is not that dear to your heart. The only mates of it may be spiders and cockroaches. You may be simply renting a room, etc.

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On the other hand, there is no place like home. It is an outstanding proverb. That is a special place where you continuously live and experience only pleasant feelings. It is a place where you feel safety, happiness, can be yourself without fear of being judged, where peace and harmony, and similar things reign. The list may be long and varied. It depends on everybody’s thoughts and emotions that are different.

Yet, this is one of the possible topics. You may write about the feelings you get when you are home or tell what it actually means for you. It may seem like a straightforward theme. Simultaneously, it gives some food to chew on. You won’t be limited in ideas.

What Is Home Essay and Its Main Objective?

Well, what does home mean to you? That is one of the possible and most sought-after topic ideas. Though it’s not advised to cover the points, which were discussed multiple times, this is an exclusive occasion. It is not scientific research. It is solely your opinion. Accordingly, every person has different attitudes.

This paper helps teachers and professors to discover students’ personal traits and evaluate the academic level of writing skills. When you write about home, you don’t simply mention the peculiarities of architecture and inner stuff. That may be only a supporting sub-topic. Your academic supervisor expects from you something special. You should reveal what lies inside of you.

During the process of writing, students are selective with the language they choose. It’s possible to see how they use different phrases and words to describe their feelings. They follow a definite structure, which is likewise important. These things tell how competent a student is.

The language choice, structure and format are likewise dependent on the home type. They are different in different parts of the globe. If you were abroad, you are welcome to mention it too and even make it your topic. For instance, “Differences between home in England and Canada.” Simultaneously, you may add a sub-topic about the relationships of neighbors that likewise differ or/and are similar.

Home Definition Essay and How to Compose It

We already know what the home definition essay is. Now, it’s high time to learn how to compose this essay. The structure of this assignment is typical for any other 5-paragraph essay. It includes three major sections, which are the introduction, main body, and conclusion. The preparation should include a few more points. The full picture is like this:

Choose a topic;

Research the main question;
Craft an outline;
Compose the thesis statement;
Write a draft;
Revise your draft;
Write the final version and submit.

Your topic should be interesting for the readers, and you should be enthusiastic about it. Thus, you’ll complete it faster. For instance, write about “what makes a house a home.” Research the matter. Though this is not a real scientific paper, you’re free to make some researches. Find the thoughts of other people, find similar essays or works of famous authors. Make an outline, which includes all points you wish to cover.

Compose your thesis. The entire paper will be dependent on what your primary purpose is. Make it brief but catchy. Your readers should clearly understand what you wish to cover. Afterward, write the initial draft. Your introduction and conclusion should be informative and short. The main body develops your thesis. Give some examples of your real life.

In the end, reread your essay to be sure that you haven’t made some mistakes. That is the last part of your project. You only should submit it and hand over to your academic supervisor.

What Is ‘Home’: Personal Idea and Scholar’s Approaches to the Definition of ‘Home’

Introduction, perspectives of scholars, personal definition, concluding thoughts.

The concept of a home has always had multiple levels of complexity as it was approached by different scholars in various ways. Nevertheless, the associations that come with the word ‘home’ are the most comforting and reassuring to most people on this planet. Home brings one’s mind to a place of stability and acceptance and represents a place in which a person feels comfortable and safe. It is where most of the people’s memories are formed, and in many cases, home is a feeling rather than a distinct place. In this paper, a summary of scholar’s approaches to defining ‘home’ will be presented in order to come to a conclusion regarding a personal idea of how the concept should be viewed.

Macy Douglas’s (1993) approach toward defining the concept of home is unique because it combines both positive and potentially negative influences on people. Douglas reflected on the tyranny of the home, in which young people felt trapped and wanted to escape the control and scrutiny of their parents. The combination of nostalgia and resistance to rules that exist in people’s homes is an interesting mixture, which may contribute to the humorous treatment of the topic.

Therefore, it becomes clear from the start that home “cannot be defined by its functions” (1993, p. 61). This means that home does not provide the ultimate care for people and represents a space with very specific characteristics that are complicated to define and describe.

The key intention behind Douglas’s (1993) view is explaining that home is not necessarily a fixed space despite the definition of it presupposing a localizable idea. Home does not always need to be made of brick and mortar; it can be a tent in the middle of a desert, a boat by the shore of a lake, or a wagon in a trailer park. Furthermore, the size of the space does not matter either due to the wide variability of people’s views on how their homes should look. Nevertheless, there is an expected pattern of appearance and reappearance of the furnishings. An example of this is the Japanese rolling away and rolling back their betting in the morning and at night. Thus, there is a certain sense of regularity that gives people a certain level of comfort and confidence.

As the author identifies that home is not a place, she proceeds with exploring the concept from the perspective of serving people as a “memory machine” (Douglas, 1993, p. 62). She writes:

The home makes its time rhythms in response to outside pressures, it is in real time. Response to the memory of severe winters is translated into a capacity for storage, storm windows, and extra blankets; holding the memory of summer droughts, the home responds by shade-giving roofs and water tanks (Douglas, 1993, p. 62).

The capability of home to provide the necessary resources to withstand the pressures of life contributes to the shaping of people’s memories from events that take place. One does not expect to die in a hotel or at a railway station, which is why home brings a sense of utility and comfort that is defined by meeting some of the needs to which the humanity is used.

Since Douglas’s (1993) approach is focused predominantly on the concept of home as a feeling and a sense of belonging, contrasting it with other perspectives is important. For example, Bell Hooks (1990) ascribed more tangible characteristics to a home rather than abstract. The author describes the sense of safety as one reaches the porch of a house, and the feeling of arriving and homecoming brings a sense of completeness. In addition to this, Hooks (1990) discusses sexism as a tool for ensuring that women provide their labor and services to create a home place in which the spirit is nurtured. Despite the fact that sexism is viewed in a negative light, women have played defining roles in shaping the perceptions of the home, both in Black and white communities.

Heidegger (1954) viewed the concept of home from the perspective of building and dwelling. The author mentions that there are real relations between space and location and between a person and space. Spaces in which people found themselves on a daily basis reinforce the ideas of dwelling and building as connections are created on a physical basis. Building produces locations and joins spaces between them, which helps to bring a sense of home through the arrangement of objects that are detrimental to the comfort of people.

This perspective is different from the view of Douglas who suggested that there are little tangible characteristics that define home as a concept. However, it offers a new look on the problem – home is something that can be constructed for meeting the demands and expectations of people, and the building can be later given an abstract meaning that has a physical framework.

Based on the above explorations of the idea of home and what it means to people, one’s own definition of ‘home’ can be given. In the personal view, a home should not be linked solely to tangible things or only to abstract feelings. Instead, an individual should reflect on the combination of physical objects and emotions that these things evoke to create one’s own sense of home. For some people, home is defined by the presence of family – wherever the family is, there is the home. It can be in the middle of the forest on a camping trip with friends and relatives or in a cozy old house where the family is gathered around the table.

For others, home is a collection of objects that bring a person comfort and help relax after a long day of work. These objects range from technologies to old childhood books and hold a special value that others may not understand or see as valuable. Therefore, home is something that each person defines for himself or herself based on what is valuable, comfortable, and meaningful.

To summarize, the idea of ‘home’ is complex and multi-dimensional, which is why there is a range of perspectives regarding its definition. For example, Heidegger (1954) associated construction and dwelling with the term while Hooks (1990) gave it a deeper meaning substantiated by discussions on sexism and racism as Black women were forced to stay at home and serve as keepers of their homes. Whatever the perception of the topic is, it is important to understand that different social issues will influence the shaping of most notions as time goes on. However, ‘home’ should not have a unified definition because of the variety of experiences and contexts influencing its understanding.

Douglas, M. (1993). The idea of a home: A kind of space. In B. Miller Lane (Ed.), Housing and dwelling (pp. 61-68). New York, NY: Routledge.

Heidegger, M. (1954). Building, dwelling, thinking. In B. Miller Lane (Ed.), Housing and dwelling (pp. 50-61). New York, NY: Routledge.

Hooks, B. (1990). Homeplace: A site of resistance. In B. Miller Lane (Ed.), Housing and dwelling (pp. 68-73). New York, NY: Routledge.

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StudyCorgi . "What Is ‘Home’: Personal Idea and Scholar’s Approaches to the Definition of ‘Home’." June 9, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/what-is-home/.

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What Makes a House a Home?

Meghan daum on the complexities of where we take shelter.

In the canon of common dreams, it’s a classic among classics: the dream in which we discover an unfamiliar room in a familiar house. The way it usually goes is that we’re in some kind of living space, maybe our own, maybe a space that’s inexplicably taken some other form (“It was my grandmother’s house, but somehow the prime minister of France lived there!”), and suddenly there’s more of it. Suddenly the place has grown a new appendage. But it’s not exactly new. There’s a sense that it’s been there all along yet has managed to escape our notice. Sometimes there’s just one new room, sometimes there are several. Sometimes there’s an entire wing, a greenhouse, a vast expanse of land where we’d once only known a small backyard.

We are amazed, enchanted, even chastened by our failure to have seen this space before now. We are also, according to psychologists and dream experts, working through the prospect of change, the burgeoning of new possibilities. The standard interpretation of the extra-room dream is that it’s a portent, or just a friendly reminder, of shifting tides. The room represents parts of ourselves that have lain dormant but will soon emerge, hopefully in a good way, but then again, who knows? Look harder , says the extra-room dream, the geometry of your life is not what it seems. There are more sides than you thought . The angles are wider , the dimensions far greater than you’d given them credit for .

Not that we can hear much on that frequency. The human mind can be tragically literal. Chances are we exit the dream thinking only that our property value has increased. But upon fully waking up, the extra room is gone. There’s a brief moment of disappointment, then we enter our day and return to our life. We organize our movements in relation to the architecture that is physically before us. That is to say, we live our lives in the spaces we’ve chosen to call home.

Let’s get one thing straight. A house is not the same as a home. Home is an idea, a social construct, a story we tell ourselves about who we are and who and what we want closest in our midst. There is no place like home because home is not actually a place. A house on the other hand (or an apartment, a trailer, a cabin, a castle, a loft, a yurt) is a physical entity. It may be the flesh and bones of a home, but it can’t capture the soul of that home. The soul is made of cooking smells and scuffmarks on the stairs and pencil lines on a wall recording the heights of growing children. The soul evolves over time. The old saying might go, “You buy a house but you make a home,” but, really, you grow a home. You let it unfold on its own terms. You wait for it. Home is rarely in the mix the day we move into a new house. Sometimes it’s not even there the day we move out. It’s possible we should consider ourselves lucky if we get one real home in a lifetime, the same way we’re supposedly lucky if we get one great love.

“All architecture is shelter,” said the postmodernist Philip Johnson. “All great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.”

If all architecture, no matter its purpose, is shelter, then architecture intended as shelter must be the ultimate haven. If an airport or a library can cuddle, exalt, and stimulate, a house’s embrace must be at once profoundly intimate and ecstatically transportive, erotic even.

I guess this is where I come clean. I write this as a person for whom houses can have an almost aphrodisiacal quality. I say “almost” because the other charge I get from a beautiful house feels like something close to the divine. A perfect house—and by that I mean a respected house, one that was honorably designed and solidly built and allowed to keep its integrity henceforth—is a tiny cathedral. But a perfect house is also lust made manifest. It can make its visitors delirious with longing. It can send butterflies into their bellies in ways a living, breathing human being rarely can. A house that’s an object of lust says, You want me, but you’ll never have me . It says, You couldn’t have me even if you could afford me. You couldn’t have me even if I didn’t already belong to someone else . And that is because houses, like most objects of lust, lose their perfection the moment we’re granted access. To take possession of a house is to skim the top off of its magic the minute you sign the deed. It is to concede that the house you live in will never be the house you desired so ravenously. It is to accept that the American dream of homeownership is contingent upon letting go of other dreams—for instance, the kind where the rooms appear where there were none before.

Maybe that’s why architects are such sources of fascination, even aspiration. If they want an extra room, they just draw it. If they want a bigger window, a wider archway, a whole new everything, the pencil will make it so. At least that’s the layperson’s fantasy. It’s not surprising that so many fictional heroes in literature and film are architects. The profession, especially when practiced by men, seems to lend itself to a particularly satisfying montage of dreamboat moments. Here he is, artistic and sensitive at his drafting table. Here he is, perched on the steel framework of a construction site high above the earth, hard hat on his head, building plans tucked under his arm in a scroll. Here he is, gazing skyward at his final creation, his face lit by the sun’s refraction off his glass and steel, awestruck by the majesty of it all and awesome in his own right.

Nearly always, these are men on a mission. Theirs is not a vocation but a passion that both guides them and threatens to ruin them. In Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (perhaps the ne plus ultra of architect fetishization), the grindingly uncompromising Howard Roark winds up laboring at a quarry because he won’t betray his aesthetic principles. In Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case , the internationally renowned but existentially bereft architect hero flees to a leper colony for solace. Hollywood, too, seems to prefer its architects miserable and brooding, not just in the form of adorably widowed dads like Tom Hanks’s character in Sleepless in Seattle and Liam Neeson’s in Love Actually (and wasn’t the distinctly non-brooding architect patriarch of The Brady Bunch technically a widowed dad?) but also adorably commitment-phobic boyfriends and jealous, cuckolded husbands. More often than not, the intensity of their vision has contributed mightily to their demise. Why did Woody Harrelson’s character, a struggling architect, let Robert Redford’s character sleep with his wife for a million dollars in Indecent Proposal ? Because he was deeply in debt from trying to build his dream house.

Well, what better way to go down?

I think part of my problem with “Where is home?” (and the arguably worse “Where are you from?”) is that it denies people their complications. We all have one definitive birthplace (unless we were born at sea or in flight, I suppose), but after that it’s a matter of interpretation. The dwellings in which we are raised do not necessarily constitute “home.” The towns where we grow up do not always feel like hometowns, nor do the places we wind up settling down in as adults. Census data tell us that the average American moves eleven times over a lifetime. For my part, I’m sorry to say I have lived in at least thirty different houses or apartments over the course of my years. Actually, I’m not sorry; each one thrilled me in its own way. But despite those thrills, only a handful felt anything like “home,” and even then, the feeling was the kind that visits you for a moment and then flutters away. As with “happiness,” another abstraction Americans are forever trying to isolate and define, “home” has always felt to me so ephemeral as to almost not be worth talking about. As with happiness, it’s great when you happen upon it, but it can’t be chased.

A house, on the other hand, is eminently chaseable. There’s a reason shopping for a house or an apartment is called hunting. Real estate turns us into predators. We can stalk a house online or from the street. We can obsess over it, fight over it, mentally move into it and start knocking down walls before we’ve even been inside. We can spend Sundays going to open houses as though going to church. We can watch home design programs on television twenty-four hours a day. We can become addicted to Internet real estate listing sites as though the photos and descriptions were a form of pornography—which of course they totally are.

“I wish I had never seen your building,” says Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon, the austere and tortured lover-then-wife of Howard Roark in the film version of The Fountainhead . “It’s the things we admire or want that enslave us.”

It’s pretty clear that houses, despite being among our greatest sources of protection, are also among our greatest enslavers. You might say that’s because we go into too much debt for them and make them too large and fill them with too much junk. You might say it’s because they’re forever demanding our attention, always threatening to leak or crack and be in the way of a tornado. They are sanctuaries, but they are also impending disasters. And most tyrannically of all, they are mirrors. They are tireless, merciless reflections of our best and worst impulses. Unlike the chaos and unsightliness of the outside world, which can easily be construed as hardly our responsibility, the scene under our roofs is of our own making. The careless sides of ourselves—the clutter, the dust, that kitchen drawer jammed with uncategorizable detritus that plagues every household—are as much a part of us as the curated side. Our houses are not just showplaces but hiding places.

Our homes, on the other hand, are glorious, maddening no-places. They are what we spend our lives searching for or running away from or both. They are the stuff of dreams, the extra rooms that vanish upon waking, the invisible possibilities we tamp down without even knowing it. They are the architecture of the unconscious mind—which is a physically uninhabitable space. Thank goodness there are people out there building houses.

__________________________________

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My Home Essay

500 words on my home essay.

A home is a place that gives comfort to everyone. It is because a home is filled with love and life. Much like every lucky person, I also have a home and a loving family. Through My Home Essay, I will take you through what my home is like and how much it means to me.

A Place I Call Home

My home is situated in the city. It is not too big nor too small, just the perfect size. My family lives in the home. It comprises of my father, mother, sister and grandparents. We live in our ancestral home so my home is very vintage.

It is very old but remains to be super strong. There are six rooms in my home. Each family member has a unique room which they have decorated as per their liking. For instance, my elder sister is a big fan of music, so her walls are filled with posters of musicians like BTS, RM, and more.

Our drawing room is a large one with a high ceiling. We still use the vintage sofa set which my grandmother got as a wedding gift. Similarly, there is a vintage TV and radio which she uses till date.

Adjoining the drawing room is my bedroom. It is my favourite room because it contains everything that I love. I have a pet guinea pig which lives in a cage in my room. We also have a storeroom which is filled with things we don’t use but also cannot discard.

Our lawn in front of the house has a little garden. In that garden , my mother is growing her own kitchen garden. She is passionate about it and brings different seeds every month to grow them out and use them in our food.

The fondest memories I have in a place is my terrace. Our terrace is huge with many plants. I remember all the good times we have spent there as a family. Moreover, we play there a lot when my cousins come over. Thus, every nook and corner of my home is special to me.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Appreciation Towards My Home

I know a lot of people who do not have homes or not as big as mine. It makes me more grateful and appreciates my home more. Not everyone gets the fortune to have a good home and a loving family, but luckily, I have been blessed with both.

I am thankful for my home because when I grow up, I can look back at the wonderful memories I made here. The walk down the memory lane will be a sweet one because of the safety and security my home has given me. It is indeed an ideal home.

Conclusion of My Home Essay

My home is important to me because for better or worse, it helps me belong. It makes me understand my place in time and connect with the world and the universe at large. Thus, I am grateful to have a place I can call home.

FAQ on My Home Essay

Question 1: What is the importance of a home?

Answer 1: Home offers us security, belonging and privacy in addition to other essential things. Most importantly, it gives us a place with a centring where we leave every morning and long to return every night .

Question 2: Why is home important to a family?

Answer 2: A home signifies a lot more than a house. It is because we find comfort in our home as it contains memories and a place where our bonds strengthen. It is where we get plenty of benefits.

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How Do You Define 'Home'?

Our roundtable with authors from "Go Home!," an Asian diasporic anthology of fiction, essays, and poetry grappling with the true meaning of "home."

Font, Text, Design, Graphic design, Room, Illustration,

In "Go Home!" — a collection that feels particularly timely in the midst of attacks on immigrant families and communities — Asian diasporic writers are both thoughtful and generous in their reflections about who they are, where they have been, and where they belong. Their stories will provide illumination and hope to readers grappling with their own questions about family, identity, and belonging. Shondaland reached out to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (editor of "Go Home!" and author of the novel "Harmless Like You"), Viet Thanh Nguyen (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Sympathizer," who wrote the foreword to "Go Home!"), and contributors Alexander Chee (author of the national bestseller "The Queen of the Night" and "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel"), Karissa Chen (editor-in-chief of Hyphen and author of the chapbook "Of Birds and Lovers"), T Kira Madden (editor-in-chief of No Tokens and author of the forthcoming "Long Live the Tribe of the Fatherless Girls"), and Esmé Weijun Wang (author of "The Border of Paradise" and the forthcoming "The Collected Schizophrenias") to discuss this powerful and timely new anthology.

Nicole Chung: Rowan, how did this book come about? When and how did the idea come to you?

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: When I was asked to be the editor for an Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Feminist Press collaboration, I knew I wanted [the concept of] home to be the central idea.

Home was on my mind. Perhaps because it was a time when I was moving a lot. Perhaps because I’ve had a lifetime of people asking me where I was from, and not knowing if they were curious about my face or my accent. As a Japanese-Chinese-British-American person, I’ve always found the idea of home complicated. As I got older, I was lucky to meet Asian American and Asian diasporic writers who had equally complex feelings. Is home a real place? Is it a memory? Is it a stack of books? Who gets to decide when you’re at home? What does it mean when you lose a home? How do you respond when someone tells you to go home? What if you don’t know where that is?

Nicole Chung: Were there any unexpected challenges in finding or selecting pieces for this anthology?

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: We had always hoped to feature authors at different stages of their careers. So one of the steps was reaching out to do an open call. We received almost 400 submissions, the overall quality of which were very high. It was both a wonderful surprise and a huge challenge. Many included cover letters about the writer’s personal experiences of home, and of how fraught they found the subject. We knew we could only publish a small number of these submissions. In the end, I worked with both Jyothi Natarajan at the AAWW and Jisu Kim at the Feminist Press to narrow them down from a long list to a short list. Together we chose the final pieces.

Nicole Chung: Does this anthology feel especially important given ongoing attacks on immigrants and refugees?

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Absolutely. We who are Americans have to claim the United States as home. We’ve had to do that regularly throughout American history. So the work of going home remains urgent and will likely be urgent again at some point in the future. At the same time, because of Asian diasporas, perhaps not all of us feel as if the United States is our only home.

Esmé Weijun Wang: For this anthology, I wrote about food and what that means to me in terms of home, which isn’t capital-P Political. But I’m thinking all the time about politics and their effect on immigrants and refugees. I hear about ICE raids more than I used to; my husband and I talk at the dinner table about DACA because he works with undocumented teens in his job as a college counselor.

Karissa Chen: The call for the anthology was in early 2016, before Trump was elected, though of course attacks on immigrants have been constant for years. Personally, I wasn’t making the direct correlation between those political attacks and this anthology, so much as I was thinking about my own questions of home. I’d only been living in Taiwan for several months, and I was wrestling with a lot of questions of where I belonged. Suddenly, my Americanness was being pushed the forefront: not having perfect Mandarin was something I was deeply embarrassed by; the political questions of being "Chinese" versus "Taiwanese" versus "Chinese/Taiwanese American" were confusing and, to be honest, painful for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about how what I was going through was only a fraction of the discomfort that my grandparents and parents must have gone through when they immigrated to America, and yet in some ways it was more complicated, too.

But I think that even though I wasn’t consciously thinking about this political moment while writing my piece, on a baseline level I am always conscious of the fact that being the child of immigrants is something that informs everything I write, everything I am. So I’m grateful that this anthology is coming out at a moment when we need these stories to be voiced more than ever.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: The work in this anthology helped me through news-cycle blues — whether it be Amitava Kumar’s explicitly political "Love Poems for the Border Patrol" or Esmé Weijun Wang’s rendering of her struggle with the way illness changed her relationship to Taiwanese food. Racism is a way of reducing people; racism denies complexity and nuance. It comforted me that these writers were creating art.

But I think it can be dangerous to imagine that our diversity is only important in the face of this explicit threat. It has always been important, and always worth celebrating. So while I hope the anthology speaks to this time, I hope that it can speak beyond this time, too.

Nicole Chung: Why do you all think it’s so important to have a collection focused on the Asian diaspora? Why did you want to be involved?

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Jyothi Natarajan told me about [this anthology] and asked if I wanted to write a foreword. I said of course. Going home, being at home, the problems and pleasures of home have always been important concerns for me. I wanted to see what a wide diversity of Asian American writers had to say about home.

It used to be that Asian Americans concentrated on the United States, and left Asia to Asians and Asian immigrants. But a new generation has claimed Asian diaspora as a way of negotiating with the realities, conflicts, and opportunities of having two countries. For some it’s a symmetrical relationship and for many it’s asymmetrical. Either way, the Asian diaspora offers a powerful imaginative frame for thinking about culture, belonging, and politics.

T Kira Madden: I think readers will see themselves in this collection. The transplants, the outcasts, the Not Asian Enoughs, the Not White Enoughs, the wanderers, the queers, the homes of those who’ve held you, the home of your own hands.

Esmé Weijun Wang: I wanted to be a part of Rowan’s project in part because Rowan is amazing, and I knew she’d do an amazing job with this anthology. The project is important to me because the question of where "home" truly is, and the question of where someone truly belongs (which comes up so often in discussions of home, as well as via invectives thrown by others who think that you don’t properly share their home with them) is one that, as the daughter of immigrants, I’ve been dealing with all my life. In Taiwan, it’s pretty obvious pretty quickly that I wasn’t born and raised here, even if Mandarin was technically my first language; in the States, I’m asked how long I’ll be visiting the country, simply because of how I look. So there are those questions, and those feelings of home not being anywhere.

Karissa Chen: In high school, I moved from New Jersey, where I grew up, to Hong Kong — which, as you can imagine, was not an easy transition for me. At that time I really began to think about what home was. Was it a physical place? People? A sense of security? It’s something I’ve continued to ponder as I’ve gotten older — not just because I’ve continued to move (from New York to San Diego back to New York and now to Taipei), but because in each of these places I’m searching for the place that most closely aligns with some internal sense of peace.

Since moving to Taipei a few years ago, I’ve marveled at how at ease I am here. In some ways it’s the most comfortable I’ve ever been, because all the parts of me that are "weird" in America are normal in Taiwan, and I’ve never experienced that before. Yet my family and friends are still in the States. So where is "home," then? I think as Asians Americans we often feel frustrated because we can feel homeless — not really fitting into a mother country, but often not wholly embraced by the country we grew up in (or have adopted). We (and our immigrant families) have had to be imaginative and open-minded in creating homes and lives for ourselves. Our concepts of home are so rich and nuanced and difficult to parse. I love the concept of an anthology that explores all the angles of what "home" means and looks like for people in our communities.

Nicole Chung: Can you all talk a little about your specific pieces for this collection?

Alexander Chee: My essay is a story of my face no one ever believes, about the time a dog bit me in the face. I can still see the mark, but everyone else always says they can’t. It’s come to join in my mind with the other story of my face, which is about being mixed, and which is also something some people say they can’t see. It has always reminded me of a fairy tale, but especially, Korean folk tales, which often end in severe punishment — but if so, it begins with a tale I ultimately told myself, about this man who reminded me of myself but also what I hoped I could belong to, or be.

T Kira Madden: The idea of home has been so nebulous and blurred around the edges for me. I like the idea of a person standing in for home. A moment. A weather. I grew up in Boca Raton and Parkland, Florida in a Jewish community. My father was an Eastern European Jew, and my mother is Native Hawaiian and Chinese. There weren’t, and aren’t, many people like me in Boca Raton.

My essay in "Go Home!" is about domestic violence and drug addiction. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve written so far. In the piece, my mother, my father, and I are all mentally running away from the dazzling catastrophe of our life together at that point in time, until my mother and I literally run away to another state to hide.

Home, for me, has always been my mother and father, and it has always been on the move.

Karissa Chen: I’ve thought a lot about how difficult and brave it is for immigrants and refugees to start all over again, to make new lives and new homes (sometimes against their will), and what it must be like to yearn for the home of your memory, one that may or may not exist anymore. It’s this obsession that led me to Taiwan to research stories of Chinese mainland soldiers who fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War and were cut off from their homes. One of these stories is included in "Go Home!", which I felt was a perfect venue for this story of yearning.

Esmé Weijun Wang: My essay is about having to be gluten-free due to late-stage Lyme disease, and how that impacts my relationship with Taiwanese food. It was an essay that I’d wanted to write for a while, but I had no idea where such an essay might be able to be published; this collection wound up being the perfect place. Food is such an essential tie to my heritage, to Taiwan, to that "home" that I try to claim, and I’ve been cut off from large parts of it now. I jumped at the chance to be able to write about that experience.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: Esmé, it’s wonderful to read that you always wanted to write that essay. Giving a home to stories we needed to tell was exactly why this anthology felt so important to me.

I am primarily a fiction writer but I chose to make my piece an essay. It is about a Japanese tiger painter who had a breakdown. He was asked to represent his school of painting and his country in the Chicago World’s Fair. The pressure was huge. He tore up painting after painting. By the time the fair had started, he had stopped believing he was a man and had come to think he was a tiger. The essay is about art and tigers, but also about the stress of being asked to represent your people. I suppose I wanted to acknowledge the difficulty of what I was asking my contributors to do.

But if they ever felt this stress, they handled it beautifully. As far as I know, none of them are tigers.

Nicole Chung is the author of the forthcoming memoir "All You Can Ever Know" and the editor-in-chief of Catapult magazine.

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Module 3: Definition Essay

How to write a definition essay.

Part 1 of 3: Choosing the Right Word

1: choose an abstract word with a complex meaning. [1].

A simple word that refers to a concrete word will not give you much to write about, but a complex word that refers to an abstract concept provides more material to explore.

Typically, nouns that refer to a person, place, or thing are too simple for a definition essay. Nouns that refer to an idea work better, however, as do most adjectives.
For example, the word “house” is fairly simple and an essay written around it may be dull. By switching to something slightly more abstract like “home,” however, you can play around with the definition more. A “home” is a concept, and there are many elements involved in the creation of a “home.” In comparison, a “house” is merely a structure.

2: Make sure that the word is disputable.

Aside from being complex, the word should also refer to something that can mean different things to different people.

A definition essay is somewhat subjective by nature since it requires you to analyze and define a word from your own perspective. If the answer you come up with after analyzing a word is the same answer anyone else would come up with, your essay may appear to lack depth.

3: Choose a word you have some familiarity with.

For instance, if you have never heard the term “pedantic,” your understanding of the word will be limited. You can introduce yourself to the word for your essay, but without previous understanding of the concept, you will not know if the definition you describe is truly fitting.

4: Read the dictionary definition.

As an example, one definition of “friend” is “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.” [2] Your own ideas or beliefs about what a “friend” really is likely include much more information, but this basic definition can present you with a good starting point in forming your own.

5: Research the word’s origins.

Look up your chosen word in the Oxford English Dictionary or in another etymology dictionary. [3]

These sources can tell you the history behind a word, which can provide further insight on a general definition as well as information about how a word came to mean what it means today.

Part 2 of 3: Potential Elements of an Effective Definition

1: write an analysis. [4].

Separate a word into various parts. Analyze and define each part in its own paragraph.

You can separate “return” into “re-” and “turn.” The word “friendship” can be separated into “friend” and “ship.”
In order to analyze each portion of a word, you will still need to use additional defining tactics like negation and classification.
Note that this tactic only works for words that contain multiple parts. The word “love,” for instance, cannot be broken down any further. If defining “platonic love,” though, you could define both “platonic” and “love” separately within your essay.

2: Classify the term.

Specify what classes and parts of speech a word belongs to according to a standard dictionary definition.

While this information is very basic and dry, it can provide helpful context about the way that a given word is used.

3: Compare an unfamiliar term to something familiar.

An unfamiliar or uncommon concept can be explained using concepts that are more accessible to the average person.

Many people have never heard of the term “confrere,” for instance. One basic definition is “a fellow member of a profession, fraternity, etc.” As such, you could compare “confrere” with “colleague,” which is a similar yet more familiar concept. [5]

4: Provide traditional details about the term.

Explain any physical characteristics or traditional thoughts used to describe your term of choice.

The term “home” is often visualized physically as a house or apartment. In more abstract terms, “home” is traditionally thought to be a warm, cozy, and safe environment. You can include all of these features in a definition essay on “home.”

5: Use examples to illustrate the meaning.

People often relate to stories and vivid images, so using a fitting story or image that relates to the term can be used in clarifying an abstract, formless concept.

In a definition essay about “kindness,” for example, you could write about an act of kindness you recently witnessed. Someone who mows the lawn of an elderly neighbor is a valid example, just as someone who gave you an encouraging word when you were feeling down might be.

6: Use negation to explain what the term does not mean.

If a term is often misused or misunderstood, mentioning what it is not is an effective way to bring the concept into focus.

A common example would be the term “courage.” The term is often associated with a lack of fear, but many will argue that “courage” is more accurately described as acting in spite of fear.

7: Provide background information.

This is when your research about the etymology of a word will come in handy. Explain where the term originated and how it came to mean what it currently means.

Part 3 of 3: Definition Essay Structure

1: introduce the standard definition..

You need to clearly state what your word is along with its traditional or dictionary definition in your introductory paragraph.

By opening with the dictionary definition of your term, you create context and a basic level of knowledge about the word. This will allow you to introduce and elaborate on your own definition.
This is especially significant when the traditional definition of your term varies from your own definition in notable ways.

2: Define the term in your own words in your thesis.

Your actual thesis statement should define the term in your own words.

Keep the definition in your thesis brief and basic. You will elaborate on it more in the body of your paper.
Avoid using passive phrases involving the word “is” when defining your term. The phrases “is where” and “is when” are especially clunky. [6]
Do not repeat part of the defined term in your definition.

3: Separate different parts of the definition into separate paragraphs.

Each tactic or method used to define your term should be explored in a separate paragraph.

Note that you do not need to use all the possible methods of defining a term in your essay. You should use a variety of different methods in order to create a full, well-rounded picture of the term, but some tactics will work great with some terms but not with others.

4: Conclude with a summary of your main points.

Briefly summarize your main points around the start of your concluding paragraph.

This summary does not need to be elaborate. Usually, looking at the topic sentence of each body paragraph is a good way to form a simple list of your main points.
You can also draw the essay to a close by referring to phrases or images evoked in your introduction.

5: Mention how the definition has affected you, if desired.

If the term you define plays a part in your own life and experiences, your final concluding remarks are a good place to briefly mention the role it plays.

Relate your experience with the term to the definition you created for it in your thesis. Avoid sharing experiences that relate to the term but contradict everything you wrote in your essay.

Sources and Citations

http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/Definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friend?s=t
http://www.etymonline.com/
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/confrere?s=t
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/definition.htm
How to Write a Definition Essay. Provided by : WikiHow. Located at : http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Definition-Essay . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Frequently asked questions

What is an essay.

An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

Frequently asked questions: Writing an essay

For a stronger conclusion paragraph, avoid including:

Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the main body
Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

Your essay’s conclusion should contain:

A rephrased version of your overall thesis
A brief review of the key points you made in the main body
An indication of why your argument matters

The conclusion may also reflect on the broader implications of your argument, showing how your ideas could applied to other contexts or debates.

The conclusion paragraph of an essay is usually shorter than the introduction . As a rule, it shouldn’t take up more than 10–15% of the text.

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

Let’s say you’re writing a five-paragraph essay about the environmental impacts of dietary choices. Here are three examples of topic sentences you could use for each of the three body paragraphs :

Research has shown that the meat industry has severe environmental impacts.
However, many plant-based foods are also produced in environmentally damaging ways.
It’s important to consider not only what type of diet we eat, but where our food comes from and how it is produced.

Each of these sentences expresses one main idea – by listing them in order, we can see the overall structure of the essay at a glance. Each paragraph will expand on the topic sentence with relevant detail, evidence, and arguments.

The topic sentence usually comes at the very start of the paragraph .

However, sometimes you might start with a transition sentence to summarize what was discussed in previous paragraphs, followed by the topic sentence that expresses the focus of the current paragraph.

Topic sentences help keep your writing focused and guide the reader through your argument.

In an essay or paper , each paragraph should focus on a single idea. By stating the main idea in the topic sentence, you clarify what the paragraph is about for both yourself and your reader.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

Ask a question about your topic .
Write your initial answer.
Develop your answer by including reasons.
Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

In rhetorical analysis , a claim is something the author wants the audience to believe. A support is the evidence or appeal they use to convince the reader to believe the claim. A warrant is the (often implicit) assumption that links the support with the claim.

Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments . Ethos appeals to the speaker’s status or authority, making the audience more likely to trust them. Pathos appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic, for example.

Collectively, these three appeals are sometimes called the rhetorical triangle . They are central to rhetorical analysis , though a piece of rhetoric might not necessarily use all of them.

The term “text” in a rhetorical analysis essay refers to whatever object you’re analyzing. It’s frequently a piece of writing or a speech, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you could also treat an advertisement or political cartoon as a text.

The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain the effect a piece of writing or oratory has on its audience, how successful it is, and the devices and appeals it uses to achieve its goals.

Unlike a standard argumentative essay , it’s less about taking a position on the arguments presented, and more about exploring how they are constructed.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

If you have to hand in your essay outline , you may be given specific guidelines stating whether you have to use full sentences. If you’re not sure, ask your supervisor.

When writing an essay outline for yourself, the choice is yours. Some students find it helpful to write out their ideas in full sentences, while others prefer to summarize them in short phrases.

You will sometimes be asked to hand in an essay outline before you start writing your essay . Your supervisor wants to see that you have a clear idea of your structure so that writing will go smoothly.

Even when you do not have to hand it in, writing an essay outline is an important part of the writing process . It’s a good idea to write one (as informally as you like) to clarify your structure for yourself whenever you are working on an essay.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

Your subjects might be very different or quite similar, but it’s important that there be meaningful grounds for comparison . You can probably describe many differences between a cat and a bicycle, but there isn’t really any connection between them to justify the comparison.

You’ll have to write a thesis statement explaining the central point you want to make in your essay , so be sure to know in advance what connects your subjects and makes them worth comparing.

Some essay prompts include the keywords “compare” and/or “contrast.” In these cases, an essay structured around comparing and contrasting is the appropriate response.

Comparing and contrasting is also a useful approach in all kinds of academic writing : You might compare different studies in a literature review , weigh up different arguments in an argumentative essay , or consider different theoretical approaches in a theoretical framework .

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

If you’re not given a specific prompt for your descriptive essay , think about places and objects you know well, that you can think of interesting ways to describe, or that have strong personal significance for you.

The best kind of object for a descriptive essay is one specific enough that you can describe its particular features in detail—don’t choose something too vague or general.

If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

An expository essay is a common assignment in high-school and university composition classes. It might be assigned as coursework, in class, or as part of an exam.

Sometimes you might not be told explicitly to write an expository essay. Look out for prompts containing keywords like “explain” and “define.” An expository essay is usually the right response to these prompts.

An expository essay is a broad form that varies in length according to the scope of the assignment.

Expository essays are often assigned as a writing exercise or as part of an exam, in which case a five-paragraph essay of around 800 words may be appropriate.

You’ll usually be given guidelines regarding length; if you’re not sure, ask.

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Putting home ownership back within reach and supporting Canadian homeowners

From: Department of Finance Canada

News release

April 11, 2024 - Toronto, Ontario - Department of Finance Canada

One of the biggest pressures on young Canadians right now is the difficulty of saving for a down payment and qualifying for an affordable mortgage. Today, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, announced Budget 2024 will include a number of enhancements to the Home Buyers’ Plan and the Canadian Mortgage Charter that will help put homeownership back within reach.

First, for Canadians saving up for a downpayment on their first home, Budget 2024 will propose to increase the Home Buyers’ Plan limit from $35,000 to $60,000. The Home Buyers’ Plan is an existing federal program that lets Canadians withdraw from their Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) to buy or build a qualifying home. Increasing the limit means that first-time home buyers will be able to use the tax benefits of RRSP contributions to save up to $25,000 more for their downpayment – in recognition of the fact the size of a downpayment and the amount of time needed to save up for a downpayment are much larger today.

The enhanced Home Buyers’ Plan will work in tandem with the government’s Tax-Free First Home Savings Account (FHSA) which allows Canadians to contribute up to $8,000 per year, and up to a lifetime limit of $40,000, towards their first downpayment. Only a year since its launch, today, the Deputy Prime Minister announced that more than 750,000 Canadians have opened a Tax-Free First Home Savings Account. Together, the enhanced Home Buyers’ Plan and the Tax-Free First Home Savings Account will help put the downpayment on a home back within reach.

Second, to help more younger Canadians afford that first home of their own, the Deputy Prime Minister announced that in Budget 2024 the government will allow 30-year mortgage amortizations for first-time home buyers purchasing newly built homes, effective August 1, 2024. Extending the amortization limit for insured mortgages by five years for first-time buyers purchasing new builds will enable more young Canadians to afford a monthly mortgage payment and will encourage new supply.

Third, the enhancements to the Canadian Mortgage Charter will also include an expectation that, where appropriate, permanent amortization relief will be made available to protect existing homeowners that meet specific eligibility criteria. Amortization relief means eligible homeowners can reduce their monthly mortgage payment to a number they can afford, for as long as they need to. “Amortization” refers to the length of time a homeowner has to repay their mortgage; amortization relief can lower mortgage payments by stretching out this length of time. Thanks to permanent amortization relief, those homeowners who are most at risk are now better positioned to stay in their home and retain control over these important life decisions.

Fourth, to further help recent and upcoming first-time home buyers, Budget 2024 will announce a proposal that Canadians who withdraw from their Home Buyers’ Plan between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2025 will see their repayment grace period extended by three years. These first-time home buyers will now have up to five years before they need to start repayments—so they can focus on their mortgage payments and getting ahead.

To solve Canada’s housing needs, the federal government, the provinces and territories, cities and towns, the private sector, and non-profits must work together to ensure everyone has an affordable place to call home.

“We have a plan to build a Canada that works better for you, where you can get ahead, where your hard work pays off, and where you can buy a home. Faced with a shortage of housing options and increasingly high rent and home prices, younger Canadians understandably feel like the deck is stacked against them. We are changing that. What we are announcing today will make a downpayment much more attainable for younger Canadians. And by extending amortization, monthly mortgage payments will be more affordable for young Canadians who want that first home of their own.” – The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

“These measures are going to make it easier for young Canadians to save for their first home, and help bring down their monthly mortgage costs for new builds.” – The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities

Quick facts

The Government of Canada’s Budget 2024 will be tabled in the House of Commons by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.

In recent weeks, the government has announced that Budget 2024 would:

Top-up the Housing Accelerator Fund with an additional $400 million, so more municipalities can cut red tape, fast-track home construction, and invest in affordable housing. Since launching the now $4.4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund last year, the federal government has signed 179 agreements across the country to fast-track more than 750,000 homes over the next decade. This $400 million top-up will fast-track an additional 12,000 new homes in the next three years.
Launch a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the construction and upgrading of critical housing infrastructure. This includes water, wastewater, stormwater, and solid waste infrastructure to support the construction of more homes.
Restore generational fairness for renters, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, by taking new action to protect renters’ rights and unlock pathways for them to become homeowners.
Save more young families money and help more mothers return to their careers by building more affordable child care spaces and training more early childhood educators across Canada.
Create a National School Food Program to help ensure children have the best start in life, with the food they need to learn and grow, no matter their circumstances.

Canada’s economic plan is to build more homes faster and to make housing more affordable. This plan also includes:

The Apartment Construction Loan Program , a $40+ billion initiative that boosts the construction of new rental homes by providing low-cost financing to homebuilders. Budget 2024 announces an additional $15 billion in new loan funding. Since 2017, the Apartment Construction Loan Program has committed over $18 billion in loans to support the creation of more than 48,000 new rental homes. It is on track to build 101,000 new rental homes across Canada by 2031-32.
The Affordable Housing Fund , a $14+ billion initiative that supports the creation of new market and below-market rental housing and the repair and renewal of existing housing. It is designed to attract partnerships and investments to develop projects that meet a broad spectrum of housing needs, from shelters to affordable homeownership. As of December 31, 2023, the Fund has committed $8+ billion to repair or renew over 150,000 homes and support the construction of more than 32,000 new homes.
The Rapid Housing Initiative , a $4 billion fund that is fast-tracking the construction of 15,500 new affordable homes for people experiencing homelessness or in severe housing need by 2026. The Rapid Housing Initiative also supports the acquisition of existing buildings for the purpose of rehabilitation or conversion to permanent affordable housing units, focusing on the housing needs of the most vulnerable, including people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, women fleeing domestic violence, seniors, Indigenous Peoples, and persons with disabilities.

Associated links

2023 Fall Economic Statement Backgrounder: Canada’s Housing Action Plan

Media may contact:

Katherine Cuplinskas Press Secretary and Senior Communications Advisor Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance [email protected]

Media Relations Department of Finance Canada [email protected] 613-369-4000

General enquiries

Phone: 1-833-712-2292 TTY: 613-369-3230 E-mail: [email protected]

Micaal Ahmed Office of the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities [email protected]

Media Relations Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation [email protected]

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Guest Essay

My Story Was Told in ‘Hotel Rwanda.’ Here’s What I Want the World to Know Now.

By Paul Rusesabagina

Mr. Rusesabagina is the president and founder of the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation.

This week, the world will again turn its eyes toward Rwanda. April 6 marks 30 years since the start of one of the most horrific events in modern history, the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Nearer in time but not unrelated, it has been just over one year since I left Rwanda and returned to the United States, released from prison after 939 days in captivity .

I have not yet spoken at length about what those years in a Rwandan prison were like, or about the daily reality for Rwandan political prisoners who, like me, found themselves behind bars for exercising their freedom of expression. It has been a long year of physical and emotional recovery that has allowed me finally to put pen to paper again, and I expect the healing process will last the rest of my life.

The experience of being kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned and silenced by those whom I had used my voice to criticize is difficult to describe. At many times during my captivity I believed I would be silenced for good, and that I would never again see my wife, my children and my grandchildren. But today I am a free man. And as we face this important and difficult milestone, I feel grateful to be able to join with my fellow Rwandans and reflect on what, if anything, we can take from this terrible chapter of our shared history.

For me and for so many Rwandans, the 1994 genocide remains the focal point of my life. The months of April to July 1994 were a time of incomprehensible horror, in which our beautiful country was dragged into hell by brutal violence and killings on a scale previously unimaginable. At some points in the crisis, as many as 10,000 people were butchered in a day, primarily by machetes and other crude weapons. Even now, three decades later, and even for those of us who saw the killings firsthand, it is impossible to process the depravity and the gravity of the loss.

At the time, I was the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, where I tried to protect not only my own young family but also the 1,268 people who sought shelter within the walls of the hotel. Their bravery, and our daily macabre dance with death, became the backdrop of the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda.” This film brought to the screen our compromising, negotiating and begging with our would-be executioners to try to keep the waiting militia at bay.

This experience is still difficult for each one of us to relive. I am grateful to have survived it. I am also grateful for the two personal lessons I decided to take from living through this atrocity. The first: Never, ever, ever give up. This is what sustained me when I was kidnapped in August 2020 by an operative of the Rwandan intelligence services and wrongfully detained in Rwanda on charges of terrorism and other crimes, along with others who were critical of the current government. The second: Words are our most effective weapons when we are confronted by those who seek to oppress and victimize others.

Both of these lessons are on my mind today, as the world considers the state of Rwanda 30 years after the genocide brought us to our knees.

Now Rwanda is viewed by many nations as an important global partner — a partner that has bravely rebuilt itself into a thriving and inclusive modern society. But it is increasingly difficult to remain blind to the jailing — and even the disappearances and killings — of those who criticize or challenge the Rwandan government’s power. Independent journalists, human rights advocates and opposition political parties are nearly absent from the landscape of Rwandan civil society today. This is not a reconciled or inclusive society; it is an authoritarian state.

The rest of the world should stop looking the other way. As a global community, we are being confronted with the rise of authoritarianism and the co-opting of institutions meant to support basic liberties, such as the freedom of press, speech and association. Throughout the world, politics is being used as a tool to promote division, and in some cases violence, in order to gain or maintain power. We continue to see the fundamental human rights that we fought so hard for being upheld only for certain people in certain circumstances. And, as is so often the case, the vulnerable members of society are the ones who pay the greatest price. Rwanda, which today lacks strong democratic institutions and free and fair elections, is not immune to these problems.

I believe that it becomes the role of those of us who have been empowered by our circumstances to speak out, to act as a check on abuses of power and to resist the erosion of our fundamental rights. It is imperative to speak against those who seek to reduce civic space and basic freedoms for their own political gain, choose to fuel violence for profit and openly engage in brutal wars for material wealth. This becomes our work, even if speaking out puts us in the direct line of fire, as it has for me and my family.

Thirty years on from the Rwandan genocide, there is still cause for hope. We can see young Rwandans all over the world continuing to advocate genuine reconciliation and the building of a democratic Rwanda, despite the overt risks of doing so. We can see the bravery and unfailing resolve of the women of Iran and Afghanistan and those who support them. We can see the open resistance of people in Myanmar, Ukraine, Syria and Sudan standing up to tyranny and oppression. Their courage reminds us that it is our collective duty to counter autocratic regimes and policies and promote equality and, above all, peace.

This is my prayer, and hope, for the next 30 years, for Rwanda and beyond.

Paul Rusesabagina served as manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide, a story later told in the film “Hotel Rwanda.” In 2005, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. He is the president and founder of the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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3.2: How to Write a Definition Essay

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Part 1 of 3: Choosing the Right Word

1: choose an abstract word with a complex meaning. [1].

A simple word that refers to a concrete word will not give you much to write about, but a complex word that refers to an abstract concept provides more material to explore.

Typically, nouns that refer to a person, place, or thing are too simple for a definition essay. Nouns that refer to an idea work better, however, as do most adjectives.
For example, the word “house” is fairly simple and an essay written around it may be dull. By switching to something slightly more abstract like “home,” however, you can play around with the definition more. A “home” is a concept, and there are many elements involved in the creation of a “home.” In comparison, a “house” is merely a structure.

2: Make sure that the word is disputable.

Aside from being complex, the word should also refer to something that can mean different things to different people.

A definition essay is somewhat subjective by nature since it requires you to analyze and define a word from your own perspective. If the answer you come up with after analyzing a word is the same answer anyone else would come up with, your essay may appear to lack depth.

3: Choose a word you have some familiarity with.

For instance, if you have never heard the term “pedantic,” your understanding of the word will be limited. You can introduce yourself to the word for your essay, but without previous understanding of the concept, you will not know if the definition you describe is truly fitting.

4: Read the dictionary definition.

As an example, one definition of “friend” is “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.” [2] Your own ideas or beliefs about what a “friend” really is likely include much more information, but this basic definition can present you with a good starting point in forming your own.

5: Research the word’s origins.

Look up your chosen word in the Oxford English Dictionary or in another etymology dictionary. [3]

These sources can tell you the history behind a word, which can provide further insight on a general definition as well as information about how a word came to mean what it means today.

Part 2 of 3: Potential Elements of an Effective Definition

1: write an analysis. [4].

Separate a word into various parts. Analyze and define each part in its own paragraph.

You can separate “return” into “re-” and “turn.” The word “friendship” can be separated into “friend” and “ship.”
In order to analyze each portion of a word, you will still need to use additional defining tactics like negation and classification.
Note that this tactic only works for words that contain multiple parts. The word “love,” for instance, cannot be broken down any further. If defining “platonic love,” though, you could define both “platonic” and “love” separately within your essay.

2: Classify the term.

Specify what classes and parts of speech a word belongs to according to a standard dictionary definition.

While this information is very basic and dry, it can provide helpful context about the way that a given word is used.

3: Compare an unfamiliar term to something familiar.

An unfamiliar or uncommon concept can be explained using concepts that are more accessible to the average person.

Many people have never heard of the term “confrere,” for instance. One basic definition is “a fellow member of a profession, fraternity, etc.” As such, you could compare “confrere” with “colleague,” which is a similar yet more familiar concept. [5]

4: Provide traditional details about the term.

Explain any physical characteristics or traditional thoughts used to describe your term of choice.

The term “home” is often visualized physically as a house or apartment. In more abstract terms, “home” is traditionally thought to be a warm, cozy, and safe environment. You can include all of these features in a definition essay on “home.”

5: Use examples to illustrate the meaning.

People often relate to stories and vivid images, so using a fitting story or image that relates to the term can be used in clarifying an abstract, formless concept.

In a definition essay about “kindness,” for example, you could write about an act of kindness you recently witnessed. Someone who mows the lawn of an elderly neighbor is a valid example, just as someone who gave you an encouraging word when you were feeling down might be.

6: Use negation to explain what the term does not mean.

If a term is often misused or misunderstood, mentioning what it is not is an effective way to bring the concept into focus.

A common example would be the term “courage.” The term is often associated with a lack of fear, but many will argue that “courage” is more accurately described as acting in spite of fear.

7: Provide background information.

This is when your research about the etymology of a word will come in handy. Explain where the term originated and how it came to mean what it currently means.

Part 3 of 3: Definition Essay Structure

1: introduce the standard definition..

You need to clearly state what your word is along with its traditional or dictionary definition in your introductory paragraph.

By opening with the dictionary definition of your term, you create context and a basic level of knowledge about the word. This will allow you to introduce and elaborate on your own definition.
This is especially significant when the traditional definition of your term varies from your own definition in notable ways.

2: Define the term in your own words in your thesis.

Your actual thesis statement should define the term in your own words.

Keep the definition in your thesis brief and basic. You will elaborate on it more in the body of your paper.
Avoid using passive phrases involving the word “is” when defining your term. The phrases “is where” and “is when” are especially clunky. [6]
Do not repeat part of the defined term in your definition.

3: Separate different parts of the definition into separate paragraphs.

Each tactic or method used to define your term should be explored in a separate paragraph.

Note that you do not need to use all the possible methods of defining a term in your essay. You should use a variety of different methods in order to create a full, well-rounded picture of the term, but some tactics will work great with some terms but not with others.

4: Conclude with a summary of your main points.

Briefly summarize your main points around the start of your concluding paragraph.

This summary does not need to be elaborate. Usually, looking at the topic sentence of each body paragraph is a good way to form a simple list of your main points.
You can also draw the essay to a close by referring to phrases or images evoked in your introduction.

5: Mention how the definition has affected you, if desired.

If the term you define plays a part in your own life and experiences, your final concluding remarks are a good place to briefly mention the role it plays.

Relate your experience with the term to the definition you created for it in your thesis. Avoid sharing experiences that relate to the term but contradict everything you wrote in your essay.

Sources and Citations

www.roanestate.edu/owl/Definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friend?s=t
http://www.etymonline.com/
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/definition.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/confrere?s=t
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/definition.htm

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Muslim politicians in the U.K. have faced Islamophobia through Ramadan

Fatima Al-Kassab

In the U.K., Muslim politicians are getting verbal abuse. Many worry the government's new "extremism" definition targets them. Watching Gaza, it's an especially difficult Ramadan.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

This week, a huge chunk of humanity was looking skyward for a glimpse of the solar eclipse. And tonight, many in the Muslim world will be looking up, searching for a crescent moon signifying the end of a month of fasting and the start of the Eid holiday. But in the United Kingdom, tensions over the war in Gaza and rising Islamophobia mean that it's been a difficult month for Muslims, as NPR's Fatima Al-Kassab reports from London.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #1: (Singing in non-English language).

FATIMA AL-KASSAB, BYLINE: This ornate hotel banquet hall in the posh area of Mayfair is decorated with lanterns and golden crescent moons. Some of the biggest names in British politics, entertainment and the arts are breaking their fast with an iftar meal. But the guests say that the mood is somber this year.

SAYEEDA WARSI: Every Ramadan iftar event that I've been to, there's no celebrations. I always say that when you wake up in the morning, you think about Gaza. When you do iftar, you think about Gaza.

AL-KASSAB: Sayeeda Warsi is the former chairwoman of the U.K.'s ruling Conservative Party. She says that, as a Muslim, she feels the pain of Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

WARSI: There is a collective sense of trauma that is happening because of what we are watching unfold in front - on our screens.

AL-KASSAB: She's worrying about the situation at home, too. In the U.K., Islamophobic incidents have more than tripled since October 7, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel. Antisemitism has spiked, too. Death threats have been directed at Muslim politicians, especially the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. In between speeches at this iftar, he told NPR how all of this abuse leaves him questioning whether the job is worth it.

SADIQ KHAN: Why would you, as somebody, you know, who is of Islamic faith, want to be a politician knowing what politicians of our background go through? But also, if you're a parent, if you're an uncle, if you're an auntie, why would you encourage your children, your nephews and nieces to become politicians?

AL-KASSAB: Khan is the first London mayor to get the same level of round-the-clock security as the King and the Prime Minister. He's also the first Muslim to hold the job.

KHAN: You know, when my father first came to this country in the 1960s, there were signs on guesthouses and public buildings saying no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs. And by Blacks, they meant anybody who was a person of color. Within one generation, one of his children became the mayor of London, so we should be incredibly proud of the progress we've made.

AL-KASSAB: He's a member of the Labour Party. The U.K. government is run by the conservatives, and they've recently issued a new legal definition of extremism amid ongoing demonstrations over the war in Gaza. Khan and other critics say it is vague and could be used to cut off government funding to some of Britain's biggest Muslim charities.

KHAN: This conservative government can't even define Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred or racism. What the government's doing is using this to try and divide communities against each other.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Salaam aleikum. Ticketholders this way. Salaam aleikum. Peace be upon you.

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #2: (Singing in non-English language).

AL-KASSAB: Here in London's Trafalgar Square, the clouds have broken, and it's pouring with rain. I'm looking at a dozen rows of people who are lining up the steps down onto Trafalgar Square. They're huddled under umbrellas, and the rain has not deterred them. And they're waiting to break their fast here. It's one of the last nights of Ramadan.

FAIZA JAVAID: Ever since everything in Gaza started, it's made me feel closer to the religion - definitely felt, you know, more connected.

AL-KASSAB: Faiza Javaid (ph) is one of those breaking her fast in the square. She says that, growing up, she never felt out of place as a Muslim in London.

JAVAID: I felt quite - you know, I'm from here. I belong here. There's no issue at all. For the first time, I feel like I need to hold my identity a bit closer and, you know, let it shine a bit. Yeah. It's made me want to hold onto the faith that people in Gaza are holding onto.

AL-KASSAB: At a time when many Muslims are feeling despondent, Faiza says it is her Muslim identity that gives her hope.

Fatima Al-Kassab, NPR News, London.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

2024 Ethics Essay Contest winners announced

Claire Martino , a junior from New Berlin, Wis., majoring in applied mathematics and data science, is the winner of the 2024 Ethics Essay Contest for the essay "Artificial Intelligence Could Probably Write This Essay Better than Me."

The second place entry was from Morgan J. Janes , a junior from Rock Island, Ill., majoring in biology, for the essay "The Relevant History and Medical and Ethical Future Viability of Xenotransplantation."

Third place went to Alyssa Scudder , a senior from Lee, Ill., majoring in biology, for the essay "The Ethicality of Gene Alteration in Human Embryos."

Dr. Dan Lee announced the winners on behalf of the board of directors of the Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics, sponsor of the contest. The winner will receive an award of $100, the second-place winner an award of $50, and the third-place winner an award of $25.

Honorable mentions went to Grace Palmer , a senior art and accounting double major from Galesburg, Ill., for the essay "The Ethiopian Coffee Trade: Is Positive Change Brewing?" and Sarah Marrs , a sophomore from Carpentersville, Ill., majoring in political science and women, gender and sexuality studies, for the essay "Dating Apps as an Outlet to Promote Sexual Autonomy among Disabled Individuals: an Intersectional Approach to Change."

The winning essays will be published in Augustana Digital Commons .

The Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics was established to enrich the teaching-learning experiences for students by providing greater opportunities for them to meet and interact with community leaders and to encourage discussions of issues of ethical significance through campus programs and community outreach.

Dr. Lee, whose teaching responsibilities since joining the Augustana faculty in 1974 have included courses in ethics, serves as the center's director.

If you have news, send it to [email protected] ! We love hearing about the achievements of our alumni, students and faculty.

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3.2: How to Write a Definition Essay
Keep the definition in your thesis brief and basic. You will elaborate on it more in the body of your paper. Avoid using passive phrases involving the word "is" when defining your term. The phrases "is where" and "is when" are especially clunky. [6] Do not repeat part of the defined term in your definition.
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The Meaning of "Home"

4 Perspectives on Home

Part 1 of 3: Choosing the Right Word

2: Make sure that the word is disputable.

3: Choose a word you have some familiarity with.

4: Read the dictionary definition.

5: Research the word’s origins.

Part 2 of 3: Potential Elements of an Effective Definition

2: Classify the term.

3: Compare an unfamiliar term to something familiar.

4: Provide traditional details about the term.

5: Use examples to illustrate the meaning.

6: Use negation to explain what the term does not mean.

7: Provide background information.

Part 3 of 3: Definition Essay Structure

2: Define the term in your own words in your thesis.

3: Separate different parts of the definition into separate paragraphs.

4: Conclude with a summary of your main points.

5: Mention how the definition has affected you, if desired.

Sources and Citations

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

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Module 3: Definition Essay