First recorded in 1765–75
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But I confess to a shrinking sense of the incompleteness of the prescribed fig-leaves as I stand in the door of the bathing-machine at Tenby.
From Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 by Various
The bathing-machine is coming down upon us like the chariot of Queen Boadicea!
From Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 2 by Various
A bathing-machine boy comes trotting his horse through the water, and, backing up by the rock on which the distressed lady stands, bids her get on.
From Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 by Various
"The keys of the bathing-machine, or—?" he asked innocently, looking from the sea to the town.
From The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Blackwood, Algernon
At one he disappears, and presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and may be seen—a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise—splashing about in the ocean.
From The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 3, 1836-1870 by Dickens, Mamie
More than £30,000 was raised to help build the sauna in the style of a 19th Century bathing machine, which since 2020 has been set up permanently at Walpole Bay.
From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2025
The bathing machine was then rolled or dragged far enough into the surf that the lady could slip directly down its steps and into the water without much risk of being seen thus clothed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2022
They wore voluminous bathing costumes and even made use of a peculiar Victorian contraption called the bathing machine, essentially a small wooden or canvas hut on wheels.
From Slate ● Jul. 3, 2015
He began with a few initials—a couple of "A's" were his first little feat, one of them made out of an old woman and a bathing machine.
From The History of "Punch" by Spielmann, M. H. (Marion Harry)
I've had a summer of the British seaside, the bathing machine and the German band.
From The Letters of Henry James (volume I) by James, Henry
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.
