veranda

noun

ve·​ran·​da və-ˈran-də 

variants or verandah

: a usually roofed open gallery or portico attached to the exterior of a building

Synonyms

• gallery [Southern & Midland]
• lanai
• piazza [dialect]
• porch
• stoop

Examples of veranda in a Sentence

whiling away the afternoon from the inn's wide veranda

Recent Examples on the Web

Large shaded verandas, mint juleps and shaded trees covered with Spanish moss had little to do with most of Arkansas. —Curtis Varnell The Timepiece, arkansasonline.com, 13 Oct. 2024

Its ultra-luxe ships are renowned for their intimate atmosphere and elegant all-suite oceanfront accommodations, most with its own veranda, as well as the anticipatory personalized service. —Robb Report Studio, Robb Report, 10 Oct. 2024

When choosing which type of veranda is right for you and your home, consider your budget, home style, and what kind of weather your veranda will be up against based on the climate. —Hallie Milstein, Southern Living, 7 Oct. 2024

This being a summer house, outdoor space was a prime concern, so a covered veranda with an open-air fireplace was a must. —Laura May Todd, Architectural Digest, 2 Oct. 2024

Word History

Etymology

borrowed perhaps via an Indo-Portuguese creole from Portuguese varanda, akin to Spanish baranda "railing" (earlier, "balcony, floor of a building"), Catalan barana "railing," Old Occitan baranda "barrier, barricade," all going back to *varanda "enclosing barrier, the area enclosed," of obscure origin; reinforced by Hindi & Urdu baraṇḍā "roofed gallery," Marathi varãḍ, varãḍā "parapet," in part borrowed from Portuguese varanda and English veranda, in part going back to Sanskrit varaṇḍaka- "mound of earth, rampart separating two fighting elephants," varaṇḍa- "partition wall"

Note: An Anglo-Indian word, most of the early evidence for which is cited in Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (2nd edition 1903) and the Oxford English Dictionary. The superficial similarity in form and meaning of the Romance and Indo-Aryan words is striking enough that the Romance scholar Joan Coromines attempted to connect them, positing an Indo-European substratal noun as the source of both, to which he added Lithuanian (Žemaitian dialect) varanda "loop plaited from flexible twigs" (Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico). It is questionable, however, if the original meanings of the three etyma are really closely comparable, so that the phonetic likeness may simply be coincidence. The Romance word has been connected with Spanish and Portuguese vara "rod, pole" and other progeny of Latin vāra "forked pole," but, as Coromines points out, the deverbal suffix -anda would require the existence of an otherwise unknown verb *varar; other Romance forms descended from a variant *varandia/varania (see Coromines) make such a hypothesis even less likely.

First Known Use

1711, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

veranda

noun

ve·​ran·​da

variants or verandah

və-ˈran-də 

: a long open porch usually with a roof