backhouse
Americannoun
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a building behind the main building, often serving a subsidiary purpose.
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a privy; outhouse.
noun
Etymology
Origin of backhouse
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“You could rent them from the city very cheaply. Me and two other students, $20 apiece, we had a house and a little backhouse, which I used as my studio.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 31, 2026
Right after graduating high school, he was living in his parents’ backhouse and courting one of his classmates.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 11, 2025
They could build a home office, they figured — or a home gym or a rentable backhouse.
From New York Times • Nov. 12, 2021
But then, he is an old backhouse, knothole painter.
From Time Magazine Archive
Should she have crossed to the inner side of the hedge, she must have come to the door of the backhouse and got in.
From Hung Lou Meng, Book II Or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel in Two Books by Joly, H. Bencraft
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
