split-leveladj.
1.
a. Designating a house or other building which has a floor between the floor-levels of two adjoining storeys (see quot. 1957); applied to this type of design. Also, designating a room having a floor on two levels. Also absol. originally U.S.
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > a building > building of specific internal arrangement > [adjective]
roomed1596
storeyed1607
wide-roomed1860
staged1884
walkthrough1920
shotgun1938
split-level1952
open plan1954
step-up1958
raised ranch1960
landscaped1968
open-concept1978
1952 N.Y. Times 7 Sept. viii. 1/1 A community of 129 split-level houses.
1955 New Yorker 1 Oct. 102/2 In the majority of the ads for new houses, ‘split-level’ is the big word, the selling word. There are, it appears, a good many kinds of split-levels.
1957 Times 12 Nov. (Canada Suppl.) p. xv/2 A visit to one of the new planned communities will convince the stranger that Canada has gone split~level mad, provided he knows what split-level means. This is the house originally designed for a sloping site, with entrance midway between upper and lower floors.
1958 Spectator 18 July 116/2 It is the first split-level church building in America.
1959 Sunday Times 12 Apr. 21/6 America welcomed the one-storey ‘ranch’ house and the ‘split level’. Today, the development builders, who can find new names for old things, are trumpeting the ‘multi level’.
1960 Guardian 3 Feb. 6/6 The split-level £2,000 room.
1960 Guardian 24 Feb. 12/5 The house is on a sloping site, so this split~level treatment makes sense.
1963 J. N. Harris Weird World Wes Beattie (1964) ii. 20 One split level was much like another to him, but the general arrangements of Mrs. Ledley's house showed quiet good taste.
1968 P. Ableman Vac xvii. 91 There was a spiral staircase leading to split-level bedrooms.
1980 Times 29 Feb. 23 (advt.) Luxury individually designed modern split level detached house.
b. Of a cooker: having the oven and hob in separately installed units.
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the world > food and drink > food > food manufacture and preparation > equipment for food preparation > stove or cooker > [adjective]
split-level1960
1960 Times 4 Jan. 13/1 British manufacturers are at last taking advantage of the experience of the Americans... Now, in England, a number of manufacturers are producing standard units incorporating split level cookers with the oven at waist level, the hob fixed into the working surface, [etc.].
1976 S. Wales Echo 25 Nov. 27/4 (advt.) Extended kitchen, including Creda split-level oven and hob.
1978 Cornish Guardian 27 Apr. 16/3 (advt.) Large kitchen, split level cooker etc.
2. transferred and figurative.
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1955 N.Y. Times Mag. 30 Oct. 4/4 Mr. Spectorsky has looked on a community..and seen only what he planned to see—the fieldstone houses and the split-level personalities, the couples who cannot make ends meet on forty or fifty thousand a year.
1959 N.Y. Times 23 Aug. i. 66/4 (advt.) Urban and suburban fashion-seekers find the split-level dress a good investment.
1960 Washington Post 14 Jan. d 1/2 The migrant worker leads a split-level life... One state may provide adequate housing and other services. But as soon as he steps across a state line he may find himself in an area with no program to meet his needs.
1965 New Statesman 19 Mar. 456/3 George is the natural man drawn to pubs and barmaids, Arbuthnott the conscience that natters at him. This sort of split-level Englishman seems to belong with Mr Pooter.
1968 Language 44 501 Morphologically conditioned sound change (analogical change) is normally of such a nature that no new phoneme arises in a ‘split-level’ analysis.
1973 Irish Times 2 Mar. 13/4 We Irish are now inured to a split-level morality: we react in low key and circumspection when one of ‘our own people’ murder or maim; but vehemently when the slayer is ‘one of them’.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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adj.1952