Meaning & use
stately home
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Meaning
nouncountable
A large, grand country house, usually old and historically important, that once belonged to a rich family and is often open to visitors.
Grammar: Countable: one stately home, several stately homes.
Patterns
- visit a stately home
- a stately home in somewhere
We spent Sunday touring a stately home in Derbyshire.
The stately home is surrounded by formal gardens and a lake.
Many stately homes now rely on ticket sales to pay for repairs.
Word forms
| plural | stately homes |
|---|
Common combinations
- visit a stately home
- They like to visit a stately home on bank holiday weekends.
- tour a stately home
- We toured a stately home with an audio guide.
- open a stately home to the public
- The family opened their stately home to the public in 1952.
- crumbling stately home
- The film was set in a crumbling stately home.
- stately home and gardens
- The stately home and gardens are open from April.
Synonyms and how they differ
- mansion
- A mansion is simply a very large house, while a stately home suggests age, history and a famous family.
- manor house
- A manor house is older and tied to a local estate, and is usually smaller than a stately home.
- palace
- A palace is the residence of a ruler or senior official, which a stately home never is.
- country house
- Country house is a wider term for any large house in the countryside, not necessarily grand or open to visitors.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: stately home or stately?
stately home vs stately
Stately describes anything grand and dignified, such as a stately walk, and has nothing to do with the word state in the sense of government.
Practice
Which place would most naturally be called a stately home?
Choose one answer.
A stately home is a grand old country house, often shown to tourists. The other places lack that size, age and family history.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “stately home”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.