Meanings
plural accommodation houses
- historicalA building offering board and lodging to travellers.
- 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 271 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
accommodation house. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/accommodation%20house
“accommodation house.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/accommodation%20house. Accessed November 4, 2026.
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.