From Middle English tenement, from Anglo-Norman tenement, from Old French tenement, from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō.

• IPA: /ˈtɛnɪmənt/

tenement (plural tenements)

1. A building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 5]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC ↗:

     He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.

2. (legal) Any form of property that is held by one person from another, rather than being owned.

   The island of Brecqhou is a tenement of Sark.

3. (figurative) A dwelling; abode; habitation.
   • 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC ↗:

     Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?

   • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

     Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement.

• (building) tenement house, apartment building

• French: appartement, logement
• German: Mietskaserne, Wohnungsblock
• Italian: casamento, condominio, case popolari, casermone
• Portuguese: cortiço
• Spanish: casa de vecindad, vecindad, bloque de viviendas, inquilinato, (Peru) solar, conventillo

• German: Mietshaus
• Russian: арендованное имущество