roundhouse

US/ˈɹaʊndˌhaʊs/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,123 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: roundhouses

A roundhouse is a circular shed where locomotives were turned and stored. The old roundhouse, inside the roundhouse, a roundhouse turntable.

The turntable in the middle let an engine be run onto it, spun and sent down any of the radiating tracks, which was the only practical way to store engines that could not reverse easily. The Roundhouse in London is one, now a concert venue.

Definitions of roundhouse

1nounroundhouseA circular shed where locomotives were turned and stored.C2
“In the age of steam, most big railway towns had a roundhouse where engines were cleaned and repaired.”

roundhouse is a building.

Where it comes from

Round plus house. The word once also meant a lock-up for prisoners.

Dutch
rondhuis — guardhouse
English, today
roundhouse

From round + house, a Dutch rondhuis (“guardhouse”). Mid-15th c.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Railways

Practise this word

roundhouse in the wild

Barrow Hill Roundhouse, known as Staveley Engine Shed until 1948, is a former Midland Railway roundhouse in Barrow Hill, near Staveley and Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, England.
Barrow Hill Roundhouse
A roundhouse is a type of house with a circular plan, usually with a conical roof.
Roundhouse (dwelling)
In archaeology, an Atlantic roundhouse is an Iron Age stone building found in the northern and western parts of mainland Scotland, the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
Atlantic roundhouse
Although not many of these roundhouses have survived, it has been ascertained that they were based on wattle and daub walls with thatched conical roofs.
Atlantic roundhouse

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.

← Vocabulary