steading
Pluralsteadings
Pluralsteadings
- 1A farmhouse together with the barns, stables, sheds, and other buildings around it; more broadly, an estate.
The couple restored a ruined steading, turning the old cattle sheds into guest rooms.
Smoke rose from the chimneys of the scattered steadings along the valley floor.
Similarfarmstead, farm, homestead
Note
The word is built on Old English stede, "place", which also survives in the phrase in someone's stead: a steading is the place a farm is worked from, house and working buildings taken together. It often appears as farm steadings, and in Seamus Heaney's Beowulf (1999), a man singing his lament feels dwarfed by the steadings and the land around him.
- 2Present participle and gerund of stead.
Note
Both meanings of the verb are obsolete, to help someone and to take another's place, so this form belongs to old texts rather than modern use. A reader who meets the spelling today is almost always looking at the farm noun; where a verb is wanted, helping or replacing says it now.
Showing meanings only.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with steading, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
From Middle English steding ("place, farm"), from Middle English stede ("estate, property, holdings"), from Old English stede ("locality, place, site, position, station").