Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A house of prostitution.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A house of lewdness and prostitution; a house of ill-fame.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A house of prostitution; a house of ill fame; a brothel.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of bawdy-house.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a building where prostitutes are available

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • “You were as drunk as a lord last time I saw you, and about to go off to the bawdyhouse with that wench…Lord, she had an arse on her,” he added reminiscently.

    A Wicked Gentleman Jane Feather 2007

  • “You were as drunk as a lord last time I saw you, and about to go off to the bawdyhouse with that wench…Lord, she had an arse on her,” he added reminiscently.

    A Wicked Gentleman Jane Feather 2007

  • He exposed a widely tolerated bawdyhouse known as the Chicken Ranch in La Grange.

    Marvin Zindler, Eyewitness News! : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits 2007

  • Wasn't hardly nobody comin" by the bawdyhouse where I was at, either, what with so many men bein" away to the war.

    The Guns Of The South Turtledove, Harry 1960

  • Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdyhouse downtown, with

    The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1923

  • Thousands of them came to Chicago answering advertisements for "servants" and "factory hands," and found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up in a bawdyhouse.

    The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1923

  • He was surprised in a bawdyhouse by two policemen.

    The Girl in the Dilger Case 1915

  • Thousands of them came to Chicago answering advertisements for "servants" and "factory hands," and found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up in a bawdyhouse.

    The Jungle 1906

  • Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdyhouse downtown, with a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went to and from their work.

    The Jungle 1906

  • It ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lantern.

    English Satires Various 1885

Comments

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  • Brothel. Also spelled "bawdy house", and "bawdy-house", each of the three in about equal proportions in a Google Book search.

    I prefer the single word (mononym) as perhaps the only English word with -wdyh- in it (for those who keep track of such arcana).

    By the way John, it's fantastic that the search box in Wordie shows all the words containing a sequence of letters. What a capital tool!

    November 5, 2007