How many of you are old enough to remember when basements were called cellars and were virtually uninhabitable?

Knowledgeable enough on the subject to know that this is not true; cellars and basements are two completely different structures, and both existed concurrently. In fact, storm shelters use the same design blueprints that cellars do. Basements are part of the foundation, cellars usually are not; those that are tend to be big cellars. Uninhabitable? Nah, maybe, depends on the build design. A lot of the houses in my hometown have basements in the foundation, with cellars adjacent to them (like my primary residence does), some have multiple vertical cellars in the foundation, and a few don't have basements or cellars.