halfway house

Noun

halfway house (plural halfway houses)

1. A supervised residential facility that provides a structured transitional environment for people moving from institutional care, incarceration, or treatment back into the community.
   • She added that Van Houten will head to a halfway house for about a year after her release.2023 July 11, “Manson follower Leslie Van Houten released from prison after 53 years”, in The Guardian
2. (figuratively) A halfway point towards achieving a goal.
   • I consider the establishment and success of their government [i.e., the French revolutionaries' government] as necessary to stay up our own and to prevent it from falling back to that kind of Halfway-house, the English constitution.1791 February 4, Thomas Jefferson, [Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Mason, 4 February 1791], U.S. National Archives
   • […] the Plan incorporates in proper combination every available modern technique, including extensive electrification on the new standard high-voltage a.c. system at a frequency of 50 cycles; main-line diesel traction as a half-way house to electrification; lightweight diesel trains for secondary...1958 January, 'Borderer', “Ten Years of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 15
3. (literally) An inn reached about midway through a journey.
   • At last parted, and my wife and I by coach to the Opera […] Thence to Tower-wharf, and there took boat, and we all walked to Halfeway House,² and there eat and drank, and were pleasant, and so finally home again in the evening, and so good night, this being a very pleasant life that we now lead...1662 May 29 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “May 20th, 1662”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume II, London...
   • This meeting was held on October 12, 1835, at the Windmill Inn, the halfway house between the two towns.1958 January, Charles E. Lee, “The Dundee & Arbroath Railway - 1”, in Railway Magazine, page 24
4. (figuratively) Any place of calm and respite reached during a journey.
   • Even to-day Zakro is still the principal half-way house for sailing craft between the Ægean and the north coast of Africa.1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 26