Search the Dictionary

A slave warehouse, or an inclosure where slaves are quartered temporarily. Du Chaillu.

The secondary, inferior, or rear courtyard of a large house; the outer court of a castle.

Originally, the place of a king; but afterward, an apartment provided in the houses of persons of importance, where assemblies were held for dispensing justice; and hence, any large hall used for this purpose.

A person who keeps a house of prostitution, or procures women for a lewd purpose; a procurer or procuress; a lewd person; -- usually applied to a woman.

A large house. [Obs.] Swift.

A poor man, supported in a beadhouse, and required to pray for the soul of its founder; an almsman. Whereby ye shall bind me to be your poor beadsman for ever unto Almighty God. Fuller.

To conduct; to bring; -- said of persons. [Obs.] Bear them to my house. Shak.

A palanquin carrier; also, a house servant. [India]

To cheat; to chouse; to swindle; to defraud; -- often with out. [Colloq.]

A wingless, bloodsucking, hemipterous insect (Cimex Lectularius), sometimes infesting houses and especially beds. See Illustration in Appendix.

an apartment form sleeping in. Shak. Lords of the bedchamber, eight officers of the royal household, all of noble families, who wait in turn a week each. [Eng.] -- Ladies of the bedchamber, eight ladies, all titled, holding a similar official position in the royal household, during the reign of a queen. [Eng.]…

A place appropriated to the confinement and care of the insane; a madhouse. Abp. Tillotson.

An inhabitant of a madhouse; a madman. "Raving bedlamites." Beattie.

In front of; preceding in space; ahead of; as, to stand before the fire; before the house. His angel, who shall go Before them in a cloud and pillar of fire. Milton.

To ask for as a charity, esp. to ask for habitually or from house to house. Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. Ps. xxxvii. 25.

A collection of small houses surrounded by a wall and occupied by a community of Beguines.

or bellows. -- Hydrostatic bellows. See Hydrostatic. -- A pair of bellows, the ordinary household instrument for blowing fires, consisting of two nearly heart-shaped boards with handles, connected by leather, and having a valve and tube.

Family; relations; household. [Colloq.] Few persons of her ladyship's belongings stopped, before they did her bidding, to ask her reasons. Thackeray.

The inner or principal room in a hut or house of two rooms; -- opposed to but, the outer apartment. [Scot.]

troys. [Archaic or Fig.] I will sweep it with the besom of destruction. Isa. xiv. 23. The housemaid with her besom. W. Irving.