Word.ws English Dictionary

bug-house

bug-house is the alternative form of bughouse.

Meaning of bughouse

Noun

bughouse (plural bughouses)

  1. (US, slang) A flea-infested hotel, lodging-house etc.
  2. (US, slang) A prison.
  3. (US, slang) A hospital, especially a lunatic asylum.
    • Well, he was ready for the bughouse, certainly.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 277
  4. (South Africa, slang) A cheap and dirty cinema.

See all 5 meanings of bughouse

Forms of bug-house

pluralbug-houses

Questions about bug-house

What is bug-house the alternative form of?
Bug-house is the alternative form of bughouse.

Words near bug-house in the dictionary

  1. bug-eyed monster
  2. bug-eyed monsters
  3. bug-fix
  4. bug-fixes
  5. bug-free
  6. bug-house
  7. bug-hunter
  8. bug-hunters
  9. bug-man
  10. bug-men
  11. bug-on-a-stick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bug-house (page history and authors); bughouse (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: “bug-house.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bug-house. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.