board·ing house

also board·ing·house (bôr′dĭng-hous′)

A house where paying guests are provided with meals and lodging.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

boardinghouse

(ˈbɔːdɪŋˌhaʊs)

1. a private house in which accommodation and meals are provided for paying guests

2. (Education) Austral a house for boarders at a school. See also house¹⁰

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

board′ing•house`

or board′ing house`,

n., pl. -hous•es (-ˌhaʊ zɪz)

a house at which meals, or meals and lodging, may be obtained for payment.

[1720–30]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

boardinghouse - a private house that provides accommodations and meals for paying guests

boarding house

bed and breakfast, bed-and-breakfast - an overnight boardinghouse with breakfast

house - a dwelling that serves as living quarters for one or more families; "he has a house on Cape Cod"; "she felt she had to get out of the house"

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

I MUST have that, `as a went' -- and I'll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it.

"I'll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I've a cab ready outside."

"You mean we'll be in some horrible boardinghouse, in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a dingy back yard."

View in context

He would take them to poni Aniele, who kept a boardinghouse the other side of the yards; old Mrs.

Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of two-story frame tenements that lie "back of the yards." There were four such flats in each building, and each of the four was a "boardinghouse" for the occupancy of foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or Bohemians.

View in context

"Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boardinghouse; she had just discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper.

View in context

There is this difference between a furnished room and a boardinghouse. In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.

View in context

It touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift of things, sometimes on horseback, more often afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand, contractor, boardinghouse keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer, real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rumseller, mine-owner, speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved Harvey Cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and advancement of his country.

View in context

Long, rushing paragraphs flow along with the narrator's exasperation as he ventures from his boardinghouse in search of work and payment for translations already completed.

The Translator's Bride

Essie spends most of her days working as a maid at a boardinghouse, until a wealthy black woman known as Dorcas Vashon shows up and makes her the offer of a lifetime: She will provide Essie with a classical education and a fine wardrobe, and then she will spirit her away to Washington, D.C., where Essie will meet and mingle with the upper echelons of black society.

Inventing Victoria

Bina runs off to New York City and Catherine House--the very same boardinghouse for young women her mother stayed at eighteen years ago when she fled Binas father and tried (but failed) to become a famous actress.

Suma, Nova Ren. A Room Away from the Wolves