# property

Pronunciation: US say "PRAH-pur-tee" /ˈpɹɑ.pɚ.ti/; UK say "PROP-uh-tee" /ˈpɹɒp.ə.ti/

## Noun

1. A piece of land or real estate, often including any buildings on it.
   - Simple: Land or a building that someone owns.
   - _The property stretches from the road down to the river._
   - _The old farmhouse sits at the far end of a hilly forty-acre property._
2. Anything that is owned by a person or group.
   - Simple: Anything that you own and can keep, use, or sell.
   - _The will divided his property among three children._
   - _Soldiers were ordered not to damage civilian property._
3. A quality or characteristic that something has, often one shared by everything of its kind, as in 'the properties of metals'.
   - Simple: A quality that something has, like being hard, soft, or able to carry heat.
   - _Transparency is a notable property of clean glass._
   - _He studied the strange property that made the material glow._
4. Real estate, or the business of buying and selling houses and land. *(British)*
   - Simple: Houses and land, or the business of buying and selling them.
   - _After university she went into property, selling flats across London._
   - _The crash hit everyone working in property that year._
5. Ownership itself as a legal right, rather than the thing owned; the sole right to have and use something, benefit from it, and sell or otherwise dispose of it.
   - Simple: The right to be the only person who can have, use, and sell or give away something.
   - _Copyright grants the author property in the work they create._
   - _The deed transferred property in the house to the new owners._
6. A read-only or editable parameter tied to an application, component, or class, especially in object-oriented programming, where it may wrap an underlying variable.
   - Simple: A named value that belongs to an object in a program, which code can read or change.
   - _The text box exposes a read-only property that returns the current length of the input._
   - _Developers can bind the slider's value to a property on the view model._
7. A book, script, film, play, or similar creative work, or a franchise based on one, owned or bought as a commercial asset to be produced or developed. *(US)*
   - Simple: A book, film, or story that a company owns or buys so it can make money from it.
   - _The producer optioned the property before anyone else read it._
   - _Every studio wanted the property after the book topped the bestseller list._
8. An object used by performers during a stage or screen production.
   - Simple: An object that actors use on stage or screen during a play, film, or show.
   - _On a period film, the property master may spend weeks hunting down a rotary phone that fits the 1950s setting._
   - _The stage directions call for only a few properties: a kitchen table, two chairs, and a single lamp._

## Noun

9. Propriety; correctness of conduct or expression. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Correct or proper behavior, or the right use of words.

## Verb

10. To turn something or someone into a possession; to take it as one's own. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To take something or someone and make it your own.
11. To invest someone or something with properties or qualities. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To give someone or something certain qualities or features.

## Origin

From Middle English propertee, borrowed via Anglo-Norman and Old French propreté from Latin proprietās (‘a peculiarity, one's own quality, or possession’), from proprius (‘special, particular, one's own’). It is a doublet of propriety.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/property (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).