To rent is to pay for the temporary use of something.
(verb)An example of rent is when you pay to live in an apartment owned by someone else.
Rent is money paid for the use of a property or home belonging to someone else.
(noun)An example of rent is what you pay to your landlord to live in your apartment.
See rent in Webster's New World College Dictionary
noun
Origin: ME < OFr rente < LL *rendita (pp. of *rendere: see render), for L reddita (pecunia), paid (money)
transitive verb
intransitive verb
Related Forms:
transitive verb, intransitive verb
noun
Origin: n. use of obs. or dial. rent, var. of rend
See rent in American Heritage Dictionary 4
noun
Origin:
Origin: Middle English rente
Origin: , from Old French
Origin: , from Vulgar Latin *rendita
Origin: , from feminine past participle of *rendere, to yield, return; see render
.Related Forms:
verb
noun
Origin:
Origin: Short for parent
. Our Living Language When young people talk about their rents, that is, their parents, they are using a slang term that is of interest to language historians, if not necessarily thrilling for parents themselves. The term is a prime example of one of the fundamental characteristics of slang, which continually creates novel ways of expressing what are often rather ordinary things (if parents may be considered ordinary things). Slang has recently produced two expressions for “parents” that have gained wide currency—rents and parental units. Both expressions demonstrate slang's use of unusual or creative linguistic means to achieve novelty of expression. While there are many slang terms, such as bod for body or rad for radical, that result from the clipping of unstressed syllables, rents is a clipping that drops a stressed syllable, much like the similar term za, “pizza.” The desire to coin new ways of referring to things also leads speakers of slang to use circumlocutions like knuckle sandwich for “punch.” Parental units falls into this category. It plays on the jargon of bureaucrats and social science, in which the world is viewed as so much data waiting to be quantified. The appearance of terms such as rents and parental units also shows that all available styles and levels of language can be grist for slang's mill—so long as the material is perceived as irreverent, funny, or just plain cool.Learn more about rent
Related Articles