hothouse

plural hothouses · alternative hot-house

1. A heated greenhouse.

   Antonyms: coldhouse

2. figurativelyAn environment in which growth or development is encouraged naturally or artificially; a hotbed.

   A seed had been planted in Gillies's mind—and as he took up his next assignment, it would be nurtured in the brutal hothouse of frontline surgery.

   2022, Lindsey Fitzharris, The Facemaker, page 53

   2 more examples

   This had given him the strength to leave cadet school at seventeen and volunteer for active service, reach the rank of second lieutenant no later than his hothouse-bred contemporaries, begin his military studies in the General Staff Academy itself, and, still only twenty-five, graduate not only with top marks but with promotion out of turn for special excellence in military science.

   1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 163

   In 1906 and 1907 defeat was not yet total, society was still on the boil, spinning around the rim of the maelstrom. Lenin had sat in Kuokkala, waiting in vain for the second wave. But from 1908, when the reactionary rabble had tightened its grip on the whole of Russia, the underground had shriveled to nothing, the workers had swarmed like ants out of their holes and into legal bodies—trade unions and insurance associations—and the decline of the underground had sapped the vitality of the emigration too, reduced it to a hothouse existence. Back there was the Duma, a legal press—and every émigré was eager to publish there.

   1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 182

3. An environment full of conflict or plots.

   As with much of Carsley's reign, England entered this Athens hothouse with sub-plots in the background, this time the nine withdrawals from the squad which was met with a critical public response from the normally strictly-on-message captain Harry Kane.

   2024 November 14, Phil McNulty, “'A night of redemption for Carsley offers real hope for Tuchel'”, in BBC Sport

4. obsoleteA bagnio, or bathing house; a brothel.

   and now she professes a / hot-house, which I think is a very ill house too.

   c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 64

   1 more example

   Let a man ſweat once a weeke in a Hothouſe, and be well rubd and froted with a good plumpe juicie wench, and ſweet linnen, he ſhall ne’re ha’ the Poxe.

   1599 (first performance), B. I. [i.e., Ben Jonson], The Comicall Satyre of Euery Man out of His Humor. […], London: […] [Adam Islip] for William Holme, […], published 1600, →OCLC, Act IV, scene iii, signature [L iiij], verso

5. A heated room for drying greenware.
6. climatologyA hot state in global climate.

   Kruban is a tidally-locked Venusian hothouse, its surface perpetually obscured by clouds of sulfur and carbon dioxides.

   2010, BioWare, Mass Effect 2 (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Kruban

   Synonyms: greenhouse · Antonyms: icehouse

present singular third person hothouses · participle present hothousing · participle past hothoused · past hothoused · alternative hot-house

1. transitiveTo provide (a child) with an enriched environment with the aim of stimulating academic development.

   she had such an exceptional grasp of maths in her first two years at the school theyʼd been hothousing her to sit her GCSE Maths two years early

   2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 245