glasshouse
Americannoun
plural
glasshouses-
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
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.
They added this yeast to bee diets and tested it over three months in controlled glasshouse experiments.
From Science Daily • Mar. 27, 2026
"We then engineered these into crops, and if that results in an improvement in the glasshouse, then we take it to our experimental farm and test it in a real-world environment," says Prof Long.
From BBC • Sep. 18, 2023
“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
Even in conservatories, precious specimens aren’t entirely safe: Jess Snowball, the glasshouse manager at London’s Chelsea Physic Garden, describes it as an ongoing issue for herself and her colleagues at botanical gardens around the world.
From The Guardian • Jan. 15, 2020
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
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.
