These words refer to places or buildings in which people live, or to the people themselves. Home is the most general term, but it often means more than simply an occupied house or other dwelling. Specifically home refers to a place where one lives on a more or less permanent basis and with which one has strong personal ties of affection and loyalty.

• In our home , Sunday dinner in the middle of the day has always been the custom; Loving parents tend to provide secure homes for children; The young soldier kept dreaming of home .

Home may also refer to a region or country in which one was born, brought up or now resides.

• Latvia is the home of the Letts; Although I have lived in England for five years, my home is Christchurch, New Zealand.

By extension, the natural habitats of animals or the places in which they seek shelter for the raising of their young are often spoken of as homes : the wolf’s home in the rocky cave; the whale’s home in the depths of the sea.

Residence is a more formal word for home and has the suggestion of an imposing or pretentious dwelling: the mayor’s residence ; the residence of the bank manager. Residence may be used to distinguish a person’s place of business or professional activity from his home: The doctor has his rooms in the city, but his residence is in the suburbs. A residential neighbourhood is one made up largely of homes or residences rather than of commercial establishments. Residence is sometimes applied to housing provided by an educational or other institution for its students or staff members: a nurse’s residence ; the residence of the school principal. In a legal sense, a person may be said to have residence in the state of South Australia (that is, he is enrolled there, owns property there, lodges his taxation return there etc.) although he temporarily lives and works in another region or country.

Abode is a somewhat high-flown, literary term for home and has a wide application, for it does not in any way connote the actual character of a home. Abode can also refer to a place, such as a hotel, camp, cottage by the sea, etc., in which one stays only temporarily.

A hovel is a small, wretched home and suggests squalor and poverty.

• Medieval serfs lived in hovels on their lord’s estate; Over the years, the neglected little Tudor cottage became a hovel .

Habitation is a generic term and is chiefly applied to the dwellings of people who have settled homes , in contradistinction to nomads or gypsies, who change their abodes to find food, pasturage or work.

Except in a legal sense, domicile is rarely used. Domicile denotes a place of residence where one may or may not own property but where one is permanently established or intends to reside indefinitely.

Household refers to a domestic establishment – that is, to the persons dwelling together under one roof as a social unit, and not to any actual structure. It may include not only the members of a family or other organized group, but servants and retainers as well. A household may also consist of a single person living alone. When the census official speaks of a "head of household ," he is referring to the person in a family who pays the bills of maintaining the home, such as rent, mortgage payments, rates, etc.