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alehouse

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,939 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: alehouses

An alehouse is a house where beer is sold and drunk. The village alehouse, drink at the alehouse, an old alehouse.

It was a private house selling its own brew rather than a purpose-built pub, and the distinction from an inn was that an inn took travellers in. The word survives in pub names and in historical writing.

Mmberney · CC0

Definitions of alehouse

  1. 1nounalehouseA house where beer is sold and drunk.C1

    “The farm workers met at the village alehouse after a long day in the fields.”

alehouse is a house.

Where it comes from

Old English ealuhus is ale plus house, and alehouses were licensed separately from inns and taverns.

  1. Middle English

    alehous

  2. English, today

    alehouse

From Middle English alehous. From Middle English alehous, alehuse from Old English ealuhūs. by surface analysis, ale + house.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

alehouse in the wild

  • The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century to differentiate private houses from those open to the public as alehouses, taverns, and inns.

    Pub

  • The village character has changed little from a 17th-century description that "it had not a beggar,... an alehouse... a Protestant in it...".

    Little Crosby

  • Diamond Knot Brewing Company is a brewery and operator of alehouses in Mukilteo, Washington, USA.

    Diamond Knot Brewing Company

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.