Boarding-house

Full definition of boarding-house

Noun

1. Alternative form of en.
• January 1866, w:Mary Anne Barker, Station Life in New Zealand Chapter Letter VI, The housemaid at the boarding-house where we have stayed since we left Heathstock is a fat, sonsy, good-natured girl, perfectly ignorant and stupid, but she has not been long in the colony, and seems willing to learn.
• 1867, The janitor of the College to which I went directed me to a boarding-house, where I engaged a small, third-story room, which I afterwards shared with Mr. Chaucer of Jawjah, as he called the State which he had the honor to represent.
• 1871 , w:William Chambers (publisher), w
• 1874, Charles Carroll Fulton, Europe Viewed through American Spectacles, Those who come to stay over a month or two invariably abandon the hotels and take to the boarding-houses, where they can live much more comfortably and fare better for half the expense. The charge at these houses ranges from eight to twelve francs per day, including finely-furnished chambers and the use of the parlors, pianos, etc., wine at déjeûner and dinner.
• 1884, Henry James, "A New England Winter" in The Century Magazine 28 (4–5) (August–September 1884).The fleshpots were full, under Donald Mesh's roof, and his wife could easily believe that the poor girl would not be in a hurry to return to her boarding-house in Brooklyn.
• 1905-01-30
• 1906, w:O. Henry, The Four Million Chapter s:en:Between Rounds, Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house "'Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking.
• 1907, E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey, Part II, XX ed., p. 201:It’s easy enough to be a beak when you’re young and athletic, and can offer the latest University smattering. The difficulty is to keep your place when you get old and stiff, and younger smatterers are pushing up behind you. Crawl into a boarding-house and you’re safe. A master’s life is frightfully tragic.
• Rinehart Man in Lower Ten|page=227|passage=About nine o’clock or a little later he got off somewhere near Washington Circle. He went along one of the residence streets there, turned to his left a square or two, and rang a bell. He had been admitted when I got there, but I guessed from the appearance of the place that it was a boarding-house.
• 1911, Edna Ferber, Dawn O'Hara, the Girl who Laughed Chapter 6, “Oh, stop your carping, Dawn!” I told myself. “You can't expect charming tones, and Oriental do-dads and apple trees in a German boarding-house.”
• 1922, w:H. P. Lovecraft, s:Herbert West: Reanimator, Bodies were always a nuisance -- even the small guinea-pig bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in West’s room at the boarding-house.
• Woolf Jacob's Room|chapter=6|passage=Further on, blatantly advertising its meritorious solidity, a boarding-house exhibits behind uncurtained windows its testimony to the soundness of London.
• 1959, B. Perren, The Essex Coast Branches of the Great Eastern Line
• 2005, Andrew Loman, "Somewhat on the Community-System": Representations of Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page xxiv,When Hollingsworth and Priscilla retreat to a cottage at the end of the novel, they are spurning not only reformatories and phalansteries but also boarding-houses, tenements, and hotels.
• 2007, Pip Wilson, Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push, “...It′s some kind of boarding-house that she kipsies in—”