homeland

noun

SayHOHM-landUS/ˈhoʊmˌlænd/UK/ˈhəʊmˌlænd/

5 meanings of homeland

1
nouncountable
The country with which a person identifies as their own home.
Exiles often write longingly about the homeland they were forced to leave behind.
Though raised overseas, she always spoke of Greece as her true homeland.
Similarmotherland, fatherland, country, home
Note
A plain compound of home and land. With a possessive (her homeland) it stays personal: the place one person feels they belong. With the definite article it takes on a collective, public tone, as in defend the homeland or return to the homeland. In homeland security it works as a modifier before another noun, a use the other senses rarely share.
2
nouncountable
The country in which a person was born.
On the form she listed Vietnam, the homeland she had left as an infant.
He returned to his homeland for the first time since being born there decades earlier.
Similarbirthplace, motherland, home, fatherland
Note
Here the word looks back to birth rather than to feeling, and that leaves it open to misreading, since the country-of-residence meaning points the other way. Where the difference matters, as on a form or in a record, country of birth says it without doubt. Homeland in this sense is best kept for prose where the context already settles which country is meant.
3
nouncountable
The country in which a person currently lives.
Officials recorded each migrant's homeland as the nation where they had legally settled.
Long-term residents often come to treat their adopted country as a second homeland.
Similarhome, country
4
nouncountable
The territory traditionally occupied by a particular ethnic group.
The Kurdish homeland spans parts of several modern nation-states across the region.
Many tribes were driven from their ancestral homeland by colonial expansion.
Similarterritory, land, heartland
5
nounhistoricalSouth Africacountable
Under apartheid, a territory set aside for Black South Africans by the South African government.
The government resettled millions of people into the homelands during the 1970s.
Workers commuted enormous distances because their homeland lay far from the mines.
Similarbantustan
Note
A word from apartheid South Africa, used now only when writing about that history. It is spelled the same as the ethnic-territory meaning, and that overlap is the trap. An ordinary homeland is a place people belong to, but these were areas the state set aside for them. Bantustan names the same territories without ambiguity. With homeland, a plural (the homelands) or a clear South African context prevents the misreading.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of homeland apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

A compound of home and land.