Word.ws English Dictionary

barrel-house

barrel-house is the alternative form of barrelhouse.

Meaning of barrelhouse

Noun

barrelhouse (plural barrelhouses)

  1. A rough-and-tumble drinking establishment.
    • It’s beautiful, but never naïvely so; the pastoral moments were offset by barrelhouse intrusions.2008 January 14, Ben Ratliff, “Jazz Showcase Fever Propels a Mini Marathon”, in New York Times
    Synonyms:
    juke, juke joint
  2. A loud, percussive type of blues piano suitable for noisy bars or taverns.
    • A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers.1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 18, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, page 111

Forms of barrel-house

pluralbarrel-houses

Questions about barrel-house

What is barrel-house the alternative form of?
Barrel-house is the alternative form of barrelhouse.

Words near barrel-house in the dictionary

  1. barrel vaults
  2. barrel-bellied
  3. barrel-chested
  4. barrel-head
  5. barrel-heads
  6. barrel-house
  7. barrel-organ
  8. barrel-organs
  9. barrelage
  10. barrelages
  11. barrelchested

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barrel-house (page history and authors); barrelhouse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “barrel-house.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barrel-house. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.