villa
/ˈvɪlə
/noun
1(Especially in continental Europe) a large and luxurious country house in its own grounds.Several hours surfing later and Paul had located a luxurious villa, not quite in Japan, but just an hour's time difference away....
- They made fun of the capitalist system while the élite lived in these luxurious villas and ate the best.
- Developers have taken leases on the Grenadines for centuries; it is just that they planted Mustique with luxurious villas rather than with the cotton or sugar of times past.
1.1British A detached or semi-detached house in a residential district, typically one that is Victorian or Edwardian in style: [in place names]: Madison Villas...
- Then it is the grand Edwardian houses, Victorian villas, Regency and Georgian buildings, all culminating at one of the medieval city gates or bars.
- This is a Victorian villa style residence with two self contained garden apartments to the rear.
- The proposed site will house 900 residents in converted student accommodation, terraced houses and semi-detached villas spread out across newly landscaped gardens.
1.2British A rented holiday home abroad.During spring and summer, villas in Europe will be very popular, says Stuart Douglas-Lee of Abercrombie & Kent....
- A plethora of restaurants, hotels, villas and resorts are located in Ubud and cooking classes are available to tourists.
- If you really want to stay in grand style, or if you are travelling with a gaggle of friends or family members, rent one of the privately owned Spanish-style villas within the hotel grounds.
2A large country house of Roman times, having an estate and consisting of farm and residential buildings arranged around a courtyard.It was one of the latest finds at a site that had been a Roman villa estate, and previously a middle and late Iron Age farmstead....
- In written Roman sources a villa is usually the seaside or country estate of a wealthy member of the urban elite.
- Roman entertainment, like Roman roads, Roman baths, Roman villas etc, is etched in people's minds today as a result of recent films.
Origin
Early 17th century: from Italian, from Latin.
villain from Middle English:
In medieval England a villain was a feudal tenant who was entirely subject to a lord or manor—now usually spelled villein. People began to use villain as an insult implying someone was a low-born rustic, and the meaning deteriorated even further to ‘a person guilty of a crime, a criminal’. A bad character in a book was a villain from the 1820s. The word came from French and goes back to Latin villa ‘country house with an estate or farm’, from which villa (early 17th century) itself and village (Late Middle English) also derive.