glasshouse
Americannoun
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glasshouses
plural
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a glassworks.
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Chiefly British. a green-house.
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British Informal. a military prison.
noun
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a glass building, esp a greenhouse, used for growing plants in protected or controlled conditions
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obsolete a military detention centre
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another word for glassworks
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of glasshouse
First recorded in 1350–1400, glasshouse is from Middle English glas hous. See glass, house
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.
See Examples For:
“There’s something out there that thinks a corpse flower smells like heaven,” said Marc Hachadourian, director of glasshouse horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, which hosted a corpse flower bloom last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
They added this yeast to bee diets and tested it over three months in controlled glasshouse experiments.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 27, 2026
“Santa Maria will be one of the last growing areas in California before everything probably goes glasshouse or indoor in places like Detroit or Chicago or New Jersey,” Harrison said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2022
This also involved heading into the glasshouse at night because water lily flowers only come out in the dark.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2022
Ozwin, the farmer-botanist, needed a glasshouse and fields for planting, so he, too, had to go out of the city and out of the citadel’s shadow, where his seeds and seedlings would see sunlight.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
Under Theodore Roosevelt, putting up the West Wing required removing glasshouses used for growing plants.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
After growing in glasshouses, harvesting and polishing the rice grains, they found that the vitamin B1 content was increased in rice grains from these lines.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 11, 2024
Crafted in Lancashire, England, where the company, Hartley Botanic, has been manufacturing glasshouses since 1938, the Patio is available in 15 colors. $4,400 at hartley-botanic.com.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 20, 2023
Tony Montalbano, who grows cucumbers in Roydon, Essex, said he could not afford gas to heat his glasshouses and feared closure.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2022
It encompassed not only the vast archives, but the university, too, together with laboratories and glasshouses, medical theaters and music rooms, and even a celestial observatory.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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.
