mansion
Pluralmansions
- 1
- 2A separate dwelling or set of rooms inside a large house or group of buildings, now mostly heard in echoes of the biblical verse John 14:2.
The church has many mansions, and it makes room for believers who agree on very little else.
Read aloud at countless funerals, the verse about the many mansions in the Father's house pictures a home with a room set aside for each believer.
UsageMost often in the set phrase many mansions, from the verse.
Similardwelling
Note
The King James Bible of 1611 has "In my Father's house are many mansions", where the word renders the Greek monaì: dwellings or rooms, not palaces. Modern uses mostly echo that verse in the plural, as The Economist did in 2003 with "the many mansions in one east London house of God". John Denham's 1667 elegy for Cowley has the singular: the poets' shared grave is their mansion.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- The King James Bible was published in 1611. en.wikipedia.org
- John 14:2 in the King James Bible contains the quoted wording. en.wikisource.org
- The underlying Greek is monaì, meaning dwellings or rooms rather than palaces. en.wikipedia.org
- The Economist used the quoted phrase in 2003. en.wikipedia.org
- John Denham's elegy on Abraham Cowley was published in 1667. en.wikipedia.org
- The elegy uses singular mansion for the poets' shared grave. gutenberg.org
- 3A dwelling set aside for a clergyman to live in.
Note
Older writing can mislead here: a minister's mansion was simply the house that went with his post, whatever its size. The use has died out, and manse, a word still current, names the same kind of house.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Historically, mansion could mean a house provided for a clergyman, without specifying its size. fr.wiktionary.org
- Manse names a minister's house. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 4A place where travelers halt along the way on a journey; one stage of the route.
Note
Here the word stays closest to its Latin source: mānsiō, from manēre "to stay", meant a stopping-place as well as a dwelling, the halt where a traveler rested before the next stretch of road. Stage is the nearest modern word. The grand house grew from the other half of the Latin, so both come down to a place where someone stays.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Latin mānsiō derives from the verb meaning to remain or stay. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin mānsiō meant both a dwelling and a stopping-place or stage on a journey. en.wiktionary.org
- A mansio was a place where travelers stopped overnight between stretches of their journey. penelope.uchicago.edu
- The large-house meaning of mansion derives from Latin mānsiō meaning dwelling. en.wikipedia.org
- 5In astrology, one of the stations the moon passes through on its monthly circuit, or, in older use, one of the houses of the heavens.
- 6In Chinese astronomy, any one of the twenty-eight divisions into which the sky is split.
- 7In British English, a grand block of flats, usually Victorian or Edwardian, now found mostly in names such as Albert Hall Mansions and in mansion flat.
- 8In Hong Kong, an apartment building; the word is used only as part of a building's name.
- 9One of the distinct branches that together make up the Rastafari movement.
Practice
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Origin
Latin mānsiō (“dwelling, stopping-place”), formed on the past participle stem of manēre (“to stay”), gave Anglo-Norman mansion or mansiun. Middle English took the word over as mansioun.