curtilage
A small piece of land, such as a garth or yard with the buildings and structures on it, immediately surrounding a dwelling house and legally regarded as part of its property; originally, such areas were enclosed by a fence or wall.
Coordinate term: messuage
Where it comes from
Inherited from Middle English courtelage, curtilage, curtylage (“vegetable garden; croft; gardening, farming”), from Anglo-Norman curtilage, from Old French cortillage, courtillage (modern French courtillage (obsolete); compare Medieval Latin cortilagium, curtilagium), from cortil, cortill (“small court, garth”) + -age (suffix denoting a relationship with a place). Cortil, cortill are derived from cort, curt (“court of a monarch”) + -il (suffix forming place names); and cort, curt from Latin cōrtem, the accusative singular form of cōrs, a variant of cohors (“court; enclosure; farmyard; etc.”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“beside, by; near; with”) + *ǵʰer- (“to enclose”).
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry curtilage (CC BY-SA 4.0).