# villa

Pronunciation: say "VIL-uh" /ˈvɪlə/

## Noun

1. A house in the countryside or on the coast, often larger and more expensive than average and often used as a retreat.
   - Simple: A house in the country or near the sea, often big and expensive, where people go to get away and rest.
   - _They rented a villa on the Amalfi Coast for two weeks in July._
   - _The billionaire spends his summers at a hilltop villa overlooking the vineyards._
2. In ancient Rome, a country house with farm buildings arranged around a courtyard.
   - Simple: In ancient Rome, a house in the country with farm buildings around an open yard.
   - _Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a Roman villa, its barns and storerooms set around a central courtyard._
   - _The senator's villa supplied his household in the city with grain, wine, and olive oil._
3. A family house on a middle-class street, often semi-detached and built in the Victorian or Edwardian style. *(UK)*
   - Simple: A family house on a middle-class street, often an old one joined to the house next door.
   - _They bought a Victorian villa on a quiet street near the park and spent a year restoring it._
   - _The road is lined with red-brick villas, each with a bay window and a small front garden._
4. A person's village, or the homeland of their ancestors. *(slang, Nigeria)*
   - Simple: The village or home area that your family comes from.
   - _When people ask where he's from, he names his villa in the east, not Lagos, where he actually grew up._
   - _After twenty years in Lagos, he finally built a house back in his villa, where his ancestors are buried._

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3–4** — Latin vīlla, a "country house," became Italian villa and from there came into English. It has two doublets, vill and ville.
**Meaning 2** — The word was taken straight from Latin, in which vīlla meant a "country house." Two other English words, vill and ville, are doublets of it.

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