old haunts
a place often visited
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
After the brutal winter, everyone was ready for sun. I went out with my friends to enjoy craft beer week, visiting OLD HAUNTS and new establishments.
(Huffington Post)
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A former Las Vegas mob hitman, Frank Cullotta, has started showing tourists around his OLD mafia HAUNTS.
(BBC News)
(Huffington Post)
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A former Las Vegas mob hitman, Frank Cullotta, has started showing tourists around his OLD mafia HAUNTS.
(BBC News)
Did you
know?
haunt
noun
- a place often visited
verb
- to cause repeated suffering or anxiety
- to appear in a place repeatedly (as in a ghost or spirit)
(Cambridge Dictionary)
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Haunt is a 13th century word, originally used as a verb meaning to frequent a place, which stems from the Old French "hanter" (to frequent, be familiar with). The noun form in the sense of a place often visited followed not long after.
A haunt is a place where one socializes. It could be a pub, a restaurant, maybe a workout gym, your favourite record store or perhaps just a corner where you hang out with friends. Your place of work, the doctor's or dentist office or the post office, while they might be visited frequently, are not considered haunts.
Some may be familiar with the word haunt in the context of ghosts and spirits. There may have been an old empty house in your neighbourhood that the kids said was "haunted" for instance; meaning that it was inhabited by ghosts, spirits and other scary beings. A person can also be haunted by past experiences (He is still haunted by the car accident he was involved in several years ago).
Although this sense of haunted may have been used earlier, this usage was first recorded in 1590 in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a play that includes the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (mechanicals), who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set.
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"I like to go back to my old haunts whenever I travel to London on business."
noun
- a place often visited
verb
- to cause repeated suffering or anxiety
- to appear in a place repeatedly (as in a ghost or spirit)
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
Haunt is a 13th century word, originally used as a verb meaning to frequent a place, which stems from the Old French "hanter" (to frequent, be familiar with). The noun form in the sense of a place often visited followed not long after.
A haunt is a place where one socializes. It could be a pub, a restaurant, maybe a workout gym, your favourite record store or perhaps just a corner where you hang out with friends. Your place of work, the doctor's or dentist office or the post office, while they might be visited frequently, are not considered haunts.
Some may be familiar with the word haunt in the context of ghosts and spirits. There may have been an old empty house in your neighbourhood that the kids said was "haunted" for instance; meaning that it was inhabited by ghosts, spirits and other scary beings. A person can also be haunted by past experiences (He is still haunted by the car accident he was involved in several years ago).
Although this sense of haunted may have been used earlier, this usage was first recorded in 1590 in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a play that includes the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (mechanicals), who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set.
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"I like to go back to my old haunts whenever I travel to London on business."
