A house is not a home

The proverbial expression ‘a house is not a home’ has been used several times in recent popular culture and the origin might be imagined to be whichever of those was heard first. We can’t be sure when the proverb was first used but we do know where – all the early uses are American.

In 1953, the American writer Polly Adler used the term as the title of her autobiography.

In 1964, Bacharach and David wrote a song with the same title, which was a hit for Dionne Warwick.

More recently, in 1981, Luther Vandross also had a hit with the song.

In fact, the proverb pre-dates even Adler’s usage. No one is exactly sure of the first coinage of ‘a house is not a home’ but the first version known of in print comes from the American writer and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller and it may well be that she coined it herself. Her early pro-feminist work Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published in 1845, containing this opinion:

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

See also: the List of Proverbs.