homeland
/'houmlænd/
Definition
Noun: 1. The country where a person was born or which they regard as their native country: This is the primary meaning, referring to one's country of origin or the nation with which one feels a fundamental cultural, historical, or ancestral connection. 2. A region or territory considered the traditional or ancestral home of a particular people: This sense emphasizes the land as a source of ethnic or national identity, often for a people who may be dispersed.
Usage Examples
- Noun:
- She felt a deep longing for her homeland after many years abroad.
- The festival celebrates the music and traditions of their homeland.
- For many immigrants, their children's homeland is the country where they were raised, not the parents' country of birth.
Advanced Usage
- "Homeland security": This is a compound term (listed here as it is a common fixed phrase) referring to a national effort to protect a country's territory, citizens, and infrastructure from threats such as terrorism.
- The department of homeland security issued a new travel advisory.
- The word often carries strong emotional and patriotic connotations, evoking feelings of belonging, heritage, and sometimes nostalgia.
Variants and Related Words
- Homelands (plural noun): Multiple native countries or regions. Historically, it also refers to the territories designated for Black South Africans under the apartheid system.
- They visited their ancestral homelands in Europe.
- Homelandless (adjective, less common): Without a homeland.
- Motherland / Fatherland (nouns): Synonyms with similar emotional weight, with "motherland" being more common in some languages/cultures (e.g., Russia) and "fatherland" in others (e.g., Germany).
Synonyms
- Native land: The land of one's birth.
- Country of origin: A more formal or neutral term for the country where someone was born.
- Mother country: Often used by people in former colonies to refer to the colonizing nation, or more generally to one's ancestral nation.
Idioms and Phrases
- "The homeland calls": A poetic or rhetorical phrase expressing a powerful pull or duty to one's native country.
- After his studies, he felt the homeland called him back to serve his community.
Noun
-
the country where you were born
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