backhouse
Americannoun
-
backhouses
plural
-
a building behind the main building, often serving a subsidiary purpose.
-
a privy; outhouse.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of backhouse
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:
“You could rent them from the city very cheaply. Me and two other students, $20 apiece, we had a house and a little backhouse, which I used as my studio.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026
Right after graduating high school, he was living in his parents’ backhouse and courting one of his classmates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
They could build a home office, they figured — or a home gym or a rentable backhouse.
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
Also, the Russian artists run to the school of backhouse, knothole painting.
From Time Magazine Archive
Woldest thou not driue them in to the contrey, & put the one to the backhouse, the other to the plowe.
From The Education of Children by Richard Sherry
Dating to that same period, it is one of New York’s so-called backhouses, the smaller residences that landlords erected in the 19th century behind the cover of larger buildings to increase rent revenue.
From New York Times ● Oct. 10, 2019
Some farmers have sets in barns, on tractors and even in backhouses.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
