Word.ws English Dictionary

barrelhouse

barrelhouse noun: a rough-and-tumble drinking establishment.

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

Synonyms of barrelhouse

Forms of barrelhouse

pluralbarrelhouses

Origin of barrelhouse

From barrel + house. Originally used to refer specifically to a bar that served whiskey directly from the barrel.

Questions about barrelhouse

What does barrelhouse mean?
Barrelhouse means a rough-and-tumble drinking establishment.
What part of speech is barrelhouse?
Barrelhouse is a noun.
What is the plural of barrelhouse?
The plural of barrelhouse is barrelhouses.

Words near barrelhouse in the dictionary

  1. barrelfishes
  2. barrelful
  3. barrelfuls
  4. barrelhead
  5. barrelheads
  6. barrelhouse
  7. barrelhouses
  8. Barrelier
  9. barreling
  10. barrelings
  11. barrell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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: “barrelhouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barrelhouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.