A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either living in the wild or shared with humans in a domesticated environment. "Home" is also used to refer to the geographical area (whether it be a suburb, town, city or country) in which a person grew up or feels they belong, or it can refer to the native habitat of a wild animal. Sometimes, as an alternative to the definition of "home" as a physical locale ("Home is where you hang your hat"), home may be perceived to have no physical location—instead, home may relate instead to a mental or emotional state of refuge or comfort. Popular sayings along these lines are "Home is where the heart is" or "You can never go home again".
There are cultures in which members lack permanent homes, such as with nomadic people.
Terminology
The word "home" can be used for various types of residential community institutions in which people can live, such as nursing, retirement homes for seniors, prisons for criminals, treatment facilities, etc., and foster homes. A home is generally a place that is close to the heart of the owner, and can become a prized possession.
The tourist is first of all an adventurer. The dream is of the pioneer, the explorer, the great voyager or the conquering emperor. He leaves the security of home far behind and sets out beyond the perimeters of the known world for fame, fortune and excitement. He wants to take on the minotaur, scale the Matterhorn, discover a lost Amazonian tribe or sample the delights of a Thai brothel.... The essence of the tourist adventure is exhibited in the contours of the excitements that it provides. And these contours are best inferred from the stories that are told and re-told with animation to relatives, friends and colleagues at home. It is virtually never what has been seen that is recounted with enthusiasm. When the sites are described it is in the form of ritualized cliches: the Eiffel Tower really is a wonder—we went up it, and you get such a nice view. It is rather the personal moments of the tour, moments of near-crisis, that in retrospect were exciting: when one of the suitcases failed to arrive off the luggage chute at Frankfort Airport. Touring itself has been turned into a routine, restricting adventure to those moments when routine breaks down.
— John Carroll (b. 1944)
In computer terminology, a 'home' may refer to a that branches off into other tasks, e.g. a homepage or a desktop. In a full screen editor, home is often used to mean the top-leftmost character cell, or the leftmost cell on a line in a line editor. These are the initial ones used by left-to-right languages. A standard 101-key PC keyboard contains a Home key. Many home pages on the with introductory information, recent news or events, and links to subpages. "Home" may also refer to a home directory which contains the personal files of a given user of the computer system.
Psychological impact
Since it can be said that humans are generally creatures of habit, the state of a person's home has been known to physiologically influence their behavior, emotions, and overall mental health. The loss of a home (due to whatever reason, be it through accident or natural disaster, repossession, or in the case of children simply the decision to move on the part of the parents) can be a valid cause of relocation.
Some people may become homesick when they leave their home over an extended period of time. Sometimes homesickness can cause a person to feel actual symptoms of illness.
As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy.
— Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
It has been argued that psychologically "The strongest sense of home commonly coincides geographically with a dwelling. Usually the sense of home attenuates as one moves away from that point, but it does not do so in a fixed or regular way." Furthermore, places like homes can trigger self-reflection, thoughts about who one is or used to be or who one might become. These types of reflections also occur in places where there is a collective historical identity, such as Gettysburg or Ground Zero.