Workhouse

Quick meaning: Workhouse is a noun meaning (British, historical) An institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work.

Meaning

(British, historical) An institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work.

More Meanings

1. (US) A prison in which the sentence includes manual labour.
2. (British, transitive, historical) To place (a person) in the workhouse (institution for the poor).
3. (archaic) A place of manufacture; a factory.

Example Sentences

"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." / "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve.[…]"

He carefully guarded his secret, but it got out, and, when he had his invention almost completed, some men broke open his workhouse and carried it away. It was afterward returned, but his plan had been copied, and from the copy many machines were made.

The New Poor Law of 1834, a statute of quite uncommon callousness, gave [to the labourer] poor relief only within the new workhouses (where he had to seperate from wife and child to discourage the sentimental and unmalthusian habit of thoughtless procreation) and withdrawing the parish guarantee of a minimum livelihood.

Among other public buildings in a certain town which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, it boasts of one which is common to most towns, great or small, to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born, […] the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

Word Forms

• workhouses
• work house
• workhousing
• workhoused

Synonyms for workhouse

Depending on context, synonyms include bastille, poorhouse.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include poorhouse, hospice, house, bastille, union, well-house.

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