What is dwelling?

Dwelling is a nebulous concept. It is one of those words we use in different ways, and to mean different things. We can talk of a dwelling or these dwellings, but also of the act of dwelling: we can talk of things and of actions. It is a word with a long history: Parliament passed several acts in the nineteenth century dealing with dwelling houses for the poor. It has a distinct biblical context: Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, dwelt in the Ark of the Covenant and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. The word is also used in a technical sense, to define a residential property. ¹ There is then a difficulty in defining a word that is used in so many different ways.