Often people use the words home and house interchangeably assuming they mean the same thing. These are actually similar words. In fact they can mean the same entity, but in different contexts. When you point out to a building and say it is your house, you mean the physical building; whereas when you say it is your home, you mean it is the place where your family lives.
Building a house
When you create a new building for your family to occupy or rent to someone else, you will say I am building a house. In this usage, what you mean by the word ‘house’ is a physical building. A government or a private housing project is concerned with building houses. You do not call them ‘homing’ project. Similarly, the government department concerned with creating residential infrastructure is called a ‘housing board’. When you purchase a house, you will say ‘I bought a house’ but will not say ‘I bought a home’.
Living in a home
People live in homes. Home is not just a concrete building. It is a place of dwelling for the family. A home is filled with affection, bonding and love. In a home, people care for each other. A home makes up the smallest unit of a society together with all the inmates in the family. The word ‘home’ is more abstract in nature. It also means a sense of belonging.
Home refers to what and how you feel about a place
A home can be a house or apartment or tent or hut or boat. It can also be a cave or an underground tunnel. In any of these cases, if you mean it to be a place that you occupy to live in happily, you will call it a home. All homes are necessarily houses, but all houses are not necessarily homes. Only when you deem a house to be fit for living in, you will call it your home and not otherwise.
