 Learn English collocations with house and home from espressoenglish.net. The word home simply means a place where you live. This could be a house, apartment, condo, tent, etc. and where you feel an emotional connection to staying in that place. The word house usually refers specifically to the building. A house is an independent building, different from an apartment, which is one unit inside a shared building. Let's look at some collocations. Typical combinations of words with house and home. We'll start with adjectives used with the word home. A broken home refers to a family in which there are serious problems that separate the family, such as divorce, abuse, or a parent being in prison. The opposite is a secure, stable, or supportive home, a family in which the relationships are healthy and it is a good environment for children to grow up in. There are special types of homes for older people. A retirement home is a place where people can live after they retire after they stop working around age 65. Retirement homes may be apartments or they may be individual houses close together. They might often include activities and social events. People living in retirement homes are usually still active and independent. For old people who need more medical care, they can live in a nursing home. A nursing home is a place where old people live and have access to nurses, doctors, and aides who can help them with the tasks of daily life. Now let's look at some verbs that are used with the word home. We often use the verbs come, get, go, and leave with home. Note that we never say to home. Go to home, come to home, etc. This is not correct. The word home does not require the word to. Here are some examples. When are you coming home? I usually get home from work at six. We went home after the party. If you leave home early, you can catch a less crowded train. The same applies with bring somebody or something home and take somebody or something home. The preposition to is not needed. For example, if you don't eat all your food, you can take the leftovers home. I brought my kids home to change their clothes. Now let's look at combinations of home plus another word. If you bought your own house, you do not pay rent, then you are a homeowner. Homeowners might want to do some home improvement. That's repairing and changing things about the house to make it nicer to live in and also more valuable. Your hometown is the city where you grew up and your homeland is the country where you grew up. A lot of people really enjoy eating home cooking. That's a meal that has been prepared at home instead of at a restaurant or purchased pre-prepared. You can also use the adjective homemade to describe foods that were made at home. For example, I'm going to my grandmother's house for some home cooking. She brought some homemade brownies to the office. Now let's look at collocations with the word house. As you can see, most of them refer to the structure of the building itself. For example, we can describe a house as single-story, two-story, etc. to say how many floors, levels it has. The picture shows a three-story house. We can also say it's a one-bedroom house, two-bedroom house, three-bedroom house, etc. to describe how many bedrooms it has. Some positive adjectives to describe a house include a luxurious, magnificent, splendid, lovely, delightful, comfortable, or spacious house. Spacious means there's a lot of space. The house is big. Some negative adjectives include a dilapidated, shabby, or dingy house. These words mean that the house is in bad condition and probably rather dirty. And a cramped house. A cramped house is one that doesn't have enough space. A neutral way to say a house is regular and not especially fancy or expensive is to call it a modest house. A neutral and slightly positive way to say a house is small is to describe it as a cozy house. If nobody is living in a house, then it is an empty, unoccupied, or vacant house like in the picture. Let's look at some verbs that are used with the word house. You can buy a house and sell a house. If you are paying money every month to live in a house, then you are renting the house. But if you own the house and someone else is paying you money every month to live there, then you are renting the house out. Construction companies build houses and also demolish houses. That means destroy them or knock them down when they are old and no longer safe. If a homeowner borrowed money from the bank to buy the house but then has financial difficulty and stops paying the bank back, then the bank might repossess the house, take the house away from the owner so that it now belongs to the bank. Other ways to talk about home improvement include redecorating, refurbishing, remodeling, and renovating the house. All of these verbs refer to improving the house and making it nicer, like in the picture. When you are looking for a place to live, you are house hunting. After you move into a house, you might throw a housewarming party to celebrate the fact that you entered your new residence. A married woman who takes care of the house and kids while her husband works can be called a housewife. If the situation is reversed and the woman works but the man stays at home, then the man is a house husband. These people can also be called a stay-at-home mom and a stay-at-home dad if they have children. You can learn collocations fast with my e-book 1,000 English Collocations in 10 minutes a day. It will help you learn and practice common expressions. Visit espressoenglish.net to get this e-book.