Word.ws English Dictionary

disorderly house

disorderly house noun: a brothel.

Noun

disorderly house (plural disorderly houses)

  1. (dated, euphemistic) A brothel.
    • But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: […] the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses […].1906 January–October, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Collection of British Authors; 3995), copyright edition, London: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1907, →OCLC, page 15
    • Pekara, along with Officers Robert Margelewski and Roger O'Brien then ordered the theater lights turned on and began making arrests. Sixteen men were charged as inmates of a disorderly house and the cashier was arrested as the keeper of a disorderly house. The man from Elgin was arrested on charges...1981 August 22, Larry Goldsmith, “Theater Sex Charges Dropped”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 1

Examples of disorderly house in a sentence

  • Sixteen men were charged as inmates of a disorderly house and the cashier was arrested as the keeper of a disorderly house.1981 August 22, Larry Goldsmith, “Theater Sex Charges Dropped”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 1:
  • Four years ago Cynthia Payne was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for keeping a disorderly house.1982 October 12, Craig Brown, “Writing Cynthia Payne's biography”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
  • Her crime was less dramatic: she was found guilty of keeping a disorderly house by the Westminster magistrate Sir John Gonson […].2009, Dan Cruikshank, The Secret History of Georgian London, Random House, page 5:

Forms of disorderly house

pluraldisorderly houses

Questions about disorderly house

What does disorderly house mean?
Disorderly house means a brothel.
How do you use disorderly house in a sentence?
Sixteen men were charged as inmates of a disorderly house and the cashier was arrested as the keeper of a disorderly house.
What part of speech is disorderly house?
Disorderly house is a noun.
What is the plural of disorderly house?
The plural of disorderly house is disorderly houses.

Words near disorderly house in the dictionary

  1. disorderlies
  2. disorderlily
  3. disorderliness
  4. disorderly
  5. disorderly conduct
  6. disorderly house
  7. disorderly houses
  8. disorderment
  9. disorders
  10. disorders of sex development
  11. disordinal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disorderly 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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