The story
From long + house. The sense of outhouse possibly derives from Whittington's Longhouse, a public toilet in medieval London, but first attested in a translation of a similar French expression.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
longhouse
Today it means: A long communal housing of the Iroquois and some other American Indians, the Malaysians, the Indonesians, the Vikings, and many other peoples. Full definition →