villa

plural villas

1. A house, often larger and more expensive than average, in the countryside or on the coast, often used as a retreat.

   This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner : for upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the world over.

   1922, Michael Arlen, “3/6/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days

   1 more example

   What I commissioned you to get for me, and anything you see suitable to my Tusculan villa, I should be glad if you will, as you say in your letter, procure for me, only don't put yourself to any inconvenience. The truth is, there is no other place that gives me complete rest after all my worries and hard work.

   1920, Cicero, translated by Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh, The Letters of Cicero: The Whole Extant Correspondence in Chronological Order, volume 1 (hardcover), London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., page 3

2. UKA family house, often semi-detached in Victorian or Edwardian style, in a middle class street.

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   They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bath-room with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and 'every modern convenience', as the house-agents say.

   1905, E. Nesbit, chapter 1, in The Railway Children, page 1

3. NigeriaslangOne’s village or ancestral homeland.

plural villae

1. Ancient RomeA country house, with farm buildings around a courtyard.

1. A surname from Spanish.
2. ball gamesAston Villa Football Club, a football club based in Birmingham

   Olsson and Herd tussled off the ball at a free-kick before Olsson fell to the ground. Assistant referee Darren Cann signalled for a penalty and Dowd sent Herd off to the amazement of the Villa faithful.

   2011 October 22, Sam Sheringham, “Aston Villa 1 - 2 West Brom”, in BBC Sport