Word.ws English Dictionary

bring down the house

bring down the house verb: to garner enthusiastic or wild applause or laughter.

Verb

bring down the house (third-person singular simple present brings down the house, present participle bringing down the house, simple past and past participle brought down the house)

  1. (idiomatic) To garner enthusiastic or wild applause or laughter.
    • "Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one was simply splendid."1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Forms of bring down the house

third-person singular presentbrings down the house
present participlebringing down the house
past participlebrought down the house
pastbrought down the house
alternative formbring the house down

Questions about bring down the house

What does bring down the house mean?
Bring down the house means to garner enthusiastic or wild applause or laughter.
What part of speech is bring down the house?
Bring down the house is a verb.
What is the past tense of bring down the house?
The past tense of bring down the house is brought down the house.

Words near bring down the house in the dictionary

  1. bring down a notch
  2. bring down a peg
  3. bring down on
  4. bring down the curtain
  5. bring down the hammer
  6. bring down the house
  7. bring down to size
  8. bring forth
  9. bring forward
  10. bring home
  11. bring home the bacon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bring down the house (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bring down the house.ogg.

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