hot-house, hothouse, n.
(ˈhɒthaʊs)
† 1. A bathing-house with hot baths, vapour-baths, etc.; = bagnio 1. Obs.
| 1511 Churche of yvell Men A iv, Bordelles, tauernes, sellers, and hote houses dissolute, there as is commytted so many horryble synnes. 1544 T. Phaer Regim. Lyfe (1560) C vj, The pacient must..sweate in baths, or whote houses. 1552 Huloet s.v. Annoyntyng, A place nighe unto a hotte house, or stewsse wherin men be annoynted. 1625 Hart Anat. Ur. i. ii. 15 The..sweate that was rubbed off the bodie in the hotehouses. 1664–5 Pepys Diary 21 Feb., My Wife busy in going..to a hot-house to bathe herself. 1759 Johnson Idler No. 61 ¶6 He could shiver in a hothouse. |
† 2. A brothel. (
Cf. bagnio 3,
stew.)
Obs.| 1511 [see 1]. 1602 2nd Pt. Return fr. Parnass. i. ii. 257 Hee cannot swagger it well in a Tauerne, nor dominere in a hot house. 1603 Shakes. Meas. for M. ii. i. 66 Now shee professes a hot-house; which, I thinke is a very ill house too. 1699 Garth Dispens. ii. 22 A Hot-house he prefers to Julia's Charms. |
3. a. A structure, usually with glass roof and sides, kept artificially heated for the growth of plants belonging naturally to warmer climates, or of native flowers and fruits out of season.
| 1749 Lady Luxborough Lett. to Shenstone 29 Aug., A Ménagerie; and as well as I love pine-apples, would prefer it to a hot-house. 1838 Lytton Alice ii. v, The hothouses yielded their early strawberries. |
| attrib. 1771 W. Malcolm (title) A Catalogue of Hot⁓house and Greenhouse Plants. 1836 Lett. fr. Madras (1843) 26 English hot-house flowers, growing wild. 1882 Printing Times 15 Feb. 27/1 Hothouse forcing by the aid of outside subsidies. 1889 J. K. Jerome Three Men in Boat 84 Hot-house grapes. |
b. fig. (
Cf. hotbed 2.) Also
attrib.| 1802–12 Bentham Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) V. 121 The technical system is a hot-house of mendacity. 1811 Byron Farew. Malta 46 Thou little military hothouse! 1838 Dickens Nich. Nick. (1839) xxi. 201 Mrs. Wititterly is of a very excitable nature, very delicate, very fragile; a hothouse plant. 1840 Mill Let. 3 Dec. (1910) I. 119 You will be interested in the modern German art;..it appears to me a feeble, hot-house product. 1851 Robertson Serm. Ser. ii. x. (1864) 135 Men nurtured in the hothouse of religious advantages. 1853 C. Reade Peg Woff. ii. 46 She is so fresh and natural. They are all hot-house plants. 1911 G. B. Shaw Getting Married Pref. 156 A hothouse atmosphere of unnatural affection. 1964 English Studies XLV. 50 Those delicate, hot-house feelings. 1966 Listener 28 July 143/2 Opera will never cease to be a hothouse plant in this country until a wider public appreciates it. 1973 ‘E. Peters’ City of Gold & Shadows ii. 31 This hot-house community of time-expired settlers and pay-happy leave-men. |
4. A heated chamber or building for drying something.
| 1555 Eden Decades 259 Theyr corne and other grayne..doo seldome waxe rype on the ground by reason wherof they are sumtimes inforced to rype and dry them in theyr stooues and hottes houses. 1585 T. Washington tr. Nicholay's Voy. ii. xxi. 58 A furnace like unto the hotte houses of Germanye serving too drye the shyrtes and other linnen. 1674–91 Ray N.C. Words, Making Salt 207 The Hot-House where they set their Salt to dry. 1875 Knight Dict. Mech., Hot-house. 1. (Pottery.) A room where strong heat completes the drying of green ware, previously to..firing in a kiln. |
† 5. Among the North American Indians, a separate hut kept heated for winter residence.
Obs.| 1765 H. Timberlake Mem. 35, I retird to Kanagatucko's hot-house. Note. This Hot-house is a little hut joined to the house, in which a fire is continually kept. 1791 W. Bartram Carolina 367 Each..habitation has besides a little conical house, covered with dirt, which is called the winter or hot-house. |
6. In the West Indies, A hospital.
| 1707 H. Sloane Voy. to Jamaica I. p. ciii, One Prince, a lusty Negro, had been ill of the Yaws..and flux'd for it in one of the Chirurgeons Hot-Houses. 1788 H. Macneill Observ. Treatm. Negroes Jamaica 8 He [sc. a sick slave] is put into a house particularly appropriated to the purpose, (a lazaretto or hot-house, as it is generally called). 1790 W. Beckford Descr. Acct. Jamaica II. 17 This building has a narrow piazza in front, at the end of which is a small apartment for the nurse or hot-house woman. 1827 Hamel, the Obeah Man I. xxii. 244 The hothouse-keeper indulged him with a plentiful dose of grog. 1828 Life Planter Jamaica 49 He went to the hot-house or hospital. Ibid. 153 Several of the negroes complained of sickness, and in consequence were sent to the hot-house. 1834 R. R. Madden Let. 4 Apr. in Twelvemonth's Residence W. Indies (1835) I. 154 The hot-house doctor is generally a negro disqualified by age or infirmity for labour in the field. He has charge of the medicines. |
Hence
ˈhothouse v. trans., to place or cultivate in a hothouse. Also
fig.| 1833 Fonblanque Eng. under 7 Administ. (1837) II. 355 Hot-housing and the manure of Mammon. 1892 Standard 23 Dec. 2/2 Every trivial incident..had been hot-housed, gloated over..and treated as a dainty dish. 1898 Atlantic Monthly Apr. 464 No fretful orchid hot-housed from the dew, But hale and hardy as the highland heather. |