Word.ws English Dictionary

hedge alehouse

hedge alehouse noun: an inferior inn or tavern.

Noun

hedge alehouse (plural hedge alehouses)

  1. (historical) An inferior inn or tavern.
    • HEDGE ALEHOUSE, a ſmall obſcure alehouſe.[1785, Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
    • ‘Where is your warrant, if you come to that?’ said I. ‘My papers! A likely thing that I would show my papers on the ipse dixit of an unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!’1897, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Adventure of the Attorney’s Clerk”, in St. Ives

Synonyms of hedge alehouse

8 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of hedge alehouse

pluralhedge alehouses

Origin of hedge alehouse

From hedge (“third-rate”) + alehouse (“inn, tavern”). Compare hedge priest, hedge whore.

Questions about hedge alehouse

What does hedge alehouse mean?
Hedge alehouse means an inferior inn or tavern.
What part of speech is hedge alehouse?
Hedge alehouse is a noun.
What is the plural of hedge alehouse?
The plural of hedge alehouse is hedge alehouses.

Words near hedge alehouse in the dictionary

  1. heders
  2. hedes
  3. Hedetniemi's conjecture
  4. hedge
  5. hedge about
  6. hedge alehouse
  7. hedge alehouses
  8. hedge apple
  9. hedge apples
  10. hedge around
  11. hedge bindweed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hedge alehouse (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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