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

The popular Tropical Luau Lunch takes place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. both days on the historic Bonnet House’s waterfront veranda, with a catered buffet, wine, beer and mai tai cocktails, live Tahitian music and dancers. —Ben Crandell, Sun Sentinel, 3 Apr. 2025

Making no effort to conceal the creaking obviousness of the sets—the site of a locomotive crash, a veranda overlooking a beautiful garden—Gomes revels in a blatant Old Hollywood artifice. —Justin Chang, New Yorker, 3 Apr. 2025

The rooftop veranda is a top spot for yoga classes and happy hour. —Tara Massouleh McCay, Southern Living, 28 Mar. 2025

Its iconic veranda with crosshatch marble floors host impromptu meetings; its stone staircase allows for more than one dramatic entrance. —Hannah Martin, Architectural Digest, 10 Mar. 2025

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

Rhymes for veranda

• aranda
• miranda
• verandah
• banda
• ganda
• panda
• vanda
• jacaranda
• memoranda
• propaganda

Kids Definition

veranda

noun

ve·​ran·​da

variants or verandah

və-ˈran-də 

: a long open porch usually with a roof