Definition of "curtilage" [cur•ti•lage]

• Law The enclosed area immediately surrounding a house or dwelling. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home."
• "a warrant to enter the suspect's driveway, part of the traditionally protected area around the home known as the "curtilage," because he had not put up a fence."
• "Greenwood, which would allow searches, but the analogy is still flawed as the materials in question are not relinquished until asked for by the government agent as opposed to entrusted to a third party first and willingly left out in public the dissent in Greenwood stated that the garbage could not have been searched inside the curtilage or if in personal possession of the defendant in public."