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Articles and prepositions​

No article is used in the expression at home (meaning ‘in one’s own place’).

  • Is anybody at home? (not … at the home?)

At is often dropped, especially in American English.

  • Is anybody home?

Home (without to) can be used as an adverb referring to direction.

  • I think I’ll go home. (not … to home.)

There is no special preposition in English to express the idea of being at somebody’s home (like French chez, German bei, Danish/Swedish/Norwegian hos, etc). One way of saying this is to use at with a possessive.

  • We had a great evening at Philip’s.
  • Ring up and see if Jacqueline is at the Smiths’, could you?

house and home​

House is an emotionally neutral word: it just refers to a particular type of building. Home is used more personally: it is the place that somebody lives in, and can express the idea of emotional attachment to a place. Compare:

  • There are some horrible new houses in our village.
  • I lived there for six years, but I never really felt it was my home.