halfway house
- an inn or stopping place situated approximately midway between two places on a road.
- any place considered as midway in a course.
- a residence for former mental patients, convicts, or recovering drug users or alcoholics that serves as a transitional environment between confinement and the return to society.
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Origin of halfway house
First recorded in 1685–95
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for halfway house
Historical Examples
From the Halfway-house to Cape Town the character of the landscape completely changes.
Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, Volume IKarl Ritter von Scherzer
But it is only a halfway-house between common credulity and scientific method.
Introduction to the Study of HistoryCharles V. Langlois
I don't know what I should have done if one had made a halfway-house of my hair!
Set in SilverCharles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
halfway house
- a place to rest midway on a journey
- the halfway point in any progression
- a centre or hostel designed to facilitate the readjustment to private life of released prisoners, mental patients, etc
- British a compromisea halfway house between fixed and floating exchange rates
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
halfway house
(hăf′wā′)- A rehabilitation facility for individuals, such as mental patients or substance abusers, who no longer require the complete facilities of a hospital or other institution but who are not yet prepared to return to their communities.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.