What is home? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines home as “one’s place of residence”. In reality, however, “home” has multiple meanings. Although a home could refer to a tangible house, a rectangle is not always a square. For some, home might not be where they live, but instead where their parents live. A home could refer to a town, or a state. A home could even refer to a group of people. Hence, home is an abstract noun, and possesses within itself ambiguity.

    For starters, the most common definition of a home is a place in which one resides. A house, a condo, an apartment, a mansion, a teepee, a hut, could all be potential homes for one person or the next. However, a home does not have definite boundaries. A city could be a home, a state could be a home, or a country could be a home. A person could have multiple homes. For example, if one’s parents are divorced, one could have two homes, one for each parent. If a family picked up their things and moved from Arizona to Iowa, where is home? Home for this family could be only Arizona, only Iowa, both, or neither. For a college student, is home their dorm? Or their parents’ house? Residence presents a potential placeholder for home, but simply does not define it.

    Why should home solely represent a specific place? Home could also be an environment of comfort. For some, home could be when they are surrounded by their friends or family. For others, home could be at church, at school, at work, or perhaps even at a sports practice. Home in this sense could refer to where someone feels most “at home” or, in other words, the most comfortable. Contrastingly, home may not always be a place of amenity. Those who experience abuse, may dislike home, and associate it with negativity. It is also possible that one may not have a definite home. People who live on the streets, or on the road, might feel as if they have no home. Of course, home can be associated with the streets, as in their home is the street or the road, but this is dependent on the person, and their own definition of a home.

     The reason that the definition of “home” is so unclear is partly because of the feelings associated with it. For instance, oftentimes when on vacation, people get homesick. In this sense, home refers to the normal place of residence for a person or group, and homesickness is the state of missing home in a way of discomfort. However, this is not the only way one can be homesick. Usually, when college students move away from home, and live either on campus or nearby, they feel homesick. Nonetheless, they are not referring to “home” as their place of residence (because in this case, they would already be home in their dorm, apartment, etc.). In this instance, home refers to the place where they have spent either all or most of their childhood years living. Homesickness contributes to the ambiguity of home, because it is a feeling associated with several, varying definitions of the word.

     The origin of the word “home” also adds to the vagueness of the word. It comes from the Old English word hām, which is described as a place where many “souls” gather. This definition appeals both to the idea that home can refer to a physical place, but also that it can refer to the gathering of people. It is unclear in the definition of the word the motive of the gathering, but it can be concluded that it references a joyful gathering of comfort, or even an area of refuge (in the context of being a place where people feel safe). Not only has the word “home” evolved in a phonetic sense, but also historically. In the beginning of the human race, people were nomadic. They thus had no sense of home, nor what it was like. As time progressed, and people started to shift more towards sedentary lifestyles, a feeling and place of home was essentially created. Over time, it is easy to argue that the definition of home has shifted. For those who migrated during the trans-Atlantic period, were conflicted over where home really was. Had they left their home of the mother country to set up a new home in the colonial Americas? Did these new houses truly feel like home? Did a feeling of home even exist? All of these questions have shaped the way people think of home today.

     Everyone possesses their own sense of a home. For me, home is Peoria, Arizona. Home is being surrounded by my friends and family, and home is on a soccer field. All of these factors contribute to my own unique definition of “home”. I think that every person has his or her own unique definition of what home is to them, and that conveys the beauty in the ambiguity of the word “home”.