Houston

plural Houstons · alternative Hoston · alternative Houstoun · alternative Hughesdon

1. countableuncountableA habitational surname.
2. countableuncountableA male given name transferred from the surname, of mainly American usage.
3. A placename:
   1. countableuncountableA large city, the county seat of Harris County, Texas, United States, named after Sam Houston.

      The family’s ordeal began last month, when they were rushing from Rio Grande City, where they lived, to Houston, where their daughter’s specialist doctors are based, for an emergency medical checkup.

      2025 March 12, Nicole Acevedo, “U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer removed to Mexico with undocumented parents”, in NBC News, archived from the original on 30 Apr 2025

      2 more examples

      Spring in Houston is scalding sidewalks and sun-drunk lovebugs. It’s dead grass and midday thunderstorms. It isn’t the beginning or the end of anything, just a prolonged in-between through dead-end traffic on I-45.

      2020, Bryan Washington, Memorial, Atlantic Books (2021), page 254

      At least seven people were killed in the Houston area on Thursday as a destructive complex of storms with winds up to 100 mph tore through the area, triggering power outages that could stretch on for weeks amid soaring temperatures.

      2024 May 17, Dalia Faheid, Paradise Afshar, Caitlin Kaiser, Joe Sutton, Mary Gilbert and Taylor Ward, “At least 7 dead after hurricane-force winds pound Houston as power outages persist amid rising temperatures”, in CNN, archived from the original on 13 Jul 2024

      Synonyms: Space City

   2. countableuncountableA village in Renfrewshire council area, Scotland.
   3. countableuncountableA town in the Bulkley Valley, British Columbia, Canada.
   4. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Winston County, Alabama.
   5. countableuncountableA city in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska.
   6. countableuncountableA small town in Perry County, Arkansas.
   7. countableuncountableA small town in Kent County, Delaware.
   8. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Suwannee County, Florida.
   9. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Heard County, Georgia.
   10. countableuncountableA township in Adams County, Illinois.
   11. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Salt Creek Township, Jackson County, Indiana.
   12. countableuncountableA small city and township in Houston County, Minnesota.
   13. countableuncountableA small city in and one of the two county seats of Chickasaw County, Mississippi.
   14. countableuncountableA small city, the county seat of Texas County, Missouri.
   15. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in York County, Nebraska.
   16. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Union County, North Carolina.
   17. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Loramie Township, Shelby County, Ohio.
   18. countableuncountableA borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania.
   19. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Wayne County, Tennessee.
   20. abbreviationcountableellipsisuncountableEllipsis of Houston County.
4. countablemetonymicallyuncountableUS space programThe Johnson Space Center, the NASA Mission Control complex located in Houston, Texas.

   Houston, we've had a problem here.

   1 more example

   [A]ircraft were carefully guided to a precise point in the sky up to 300 miles away by a dedicated ground-based team[.] Houston’s control of the Apollo moon missions was on a vastly greater scale, but parallels are not hard to see.

   1996, Colin Latham, Ann Stobbs, Radar: A Wartime Miracle, Stroud: Sutton, page 98