bridewell
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of bridewell
First recorded in 1545–55; after a prison that formerly stood near the church of St. Bride in London
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.
After two weeks in the bridewell, Novelist Yehling changed his literary plans: "I think I'll join the Army and try to write a better book than Tolstoi's War and Peace."
From Time Magazine Archive
Very sure I am that in Boston or Salem or Plymouth she would see the bridewell and he the stocks for half as much.
From The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
So they took him and bore him to the bridewell, where they laid him in irons and left him seated in solitude, unremembered by any.
From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 07 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
When he left us he went to the county bridewell, where he remained until the assizes, an interval of about a month.
From It Is Never Too Late to Mend by Charles Reade
Where it differed from the bridewell was in its walls.
From The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore by J. R. (John Robert) Hutchinson
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.
