accommodation house

noun

A building offering board and lodging to travellers.

Meanings

nounaccommodation house (plural accommodation houses)

plural accommodation houses

  1. historicalA building offering board and lodging to travellers.
  2. euphemistichistoricalA building offering rooms to prostitutes and their clients for a short period in exchange for payment.

    […] it provides what is now accepted as a clearly authentic and valuable record of the Victorian sexual underworld and the people who frequented it. His descriptions are often vivid, such as his account of a visit to an accommodation house one summer morning […]

    1972, Michael Pearson, The Age of Consent: Victorian Prostitution and Its Enemies, page 27
    1 more example

    Subsequently, being recalled, he testified that "the phrase 'is keeping an accommodation-house,' when applied to a woman, in Jasper county, in his opinion, mean the same as a house of ill-fame, or house of prostitution." On cross-examination, he said, "the phrase 'is keeping an accommodation-house,' when applied to a woman, means the same in Jasper county as it would in Newton county, or anywhere else. […]"

    1883, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of Indiana, Indiana: Supreme Court, page 276
Cite this entry
APA

accommodation house. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/accommodation%20house

MLA

“accommodation house.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/accommodation%20house. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “accommodation house,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/accommodation%20house.

Source: accommodation house on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.