Word.ws English Dictionary

crimping house

crimping house noun: a (usually low-rise) building into which men were decoyed and plied with alcoholic drink to induce them to ship or enlist as sailors or soldiers.

Noun

crimping house (plural crimping houses)

  1. (historical) A (usually low-rise) building into which men were decoyed and plied with alcoholic drink to induce them to ship or enlist as sailors or soldiers.
    • Under pretense of taking up mendicants and vagabonds, they had scoured the streets at night, seizing upon honest mechanics, or their sons, and hurrying them to their crimping-houses, for the sole purpose of extorting money from them as a ransom.1820, Washington Irving, The Crayon Papers

Forms of crimping house

pluralcrimping houses
alternative formcrimp house
alternative formcrimping-house

Questions about crimping house

What does crimping house mean?
Crimping house means a (usually low-rise) building into which men were decoyed and plied with alcoholic drink to induce them to ship or enlist as sailors or soldiers.
What part of speech is crimping house?
Crimping house is a noun.
What is the plural of crimping house?
The plural of crimping house is crimping houses.

Words near crimping house in the dictionary

  1. crimped
  2. crimper
  3. crimpers
  4. crimpiness
  5. crimping
  6. crimping house
  7. crimping houses
  8. crimping pin
  9. crimping pins
  10. crimping pliers
  11. crimping tool

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crimping 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.

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