Word.ws English Dictionary

hothouse

hothouse noun: a heated greenhouse.

hothouse: a heated greenhouse
Image: W.carter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hothouse (plural hothouses)

  1. A heated greenhouse.
    Antonyms:
    coldhouse
  2. (figuratively) An environment in which growth or development is encouraged naturally or artificially; a hotbed.
    • This had given him the strength to leave cadet school at seventeen and volunteer for active service, reach the rank of second lieutenant no later than his hothouse-bred contemporaries, begin his military studies in the General Staff Academy itself, and, still only twenty-five, graduate not only...1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 163
    • In 1906 and 1907 defeat was not yet total, society was still on the boil, spinning around the rim of the maelstrom. Lenin had sat in Kuokkala, waiting in vain for the second wave. But from 1908, when the reactionary rabble had tightened its grip on the whole of Russia, the underground had shriveled...1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 182
  3. An environment full of conflict or plots.
    • As with much of Carsley's reign, England entered this Athens hothouse with sub-plots in the background, this time the nine withdrawals from the squad which was met with a critical public response from the normally strictly-on-message captain Harry Kane.2024 November 14, Phil McNulty, “'A night of redemption for Carsley offers real hope for Tuchel'”, in BBC Sport
  4. (obsolete) A bagnio, or bathing house; a brothel.
    • Let a man ſweat once a weeke in a Hothouſe, and be well rubd and froted with a good plumpe juicie wench, and ſweet linnen, he ſhall ne’re ha’ the Poxe.1599 (first performance), B. I. [i.e., Ben Jonson], The Comicall Satyre of Euery Man out of His Humor. […], London: […] [Adam Islip] for William Holme, […], published 1600, →OCLC, Act IV, scene iii...
    • and now she professes a / hot-house, which I think is a very ill house too.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  5. A heated room for drying greenware.
  6. A hot state in global climate.
    • Kruban is a tidally-locked Venusian hothouse, its surface perpetually obscured by clouds of sulfur and carbon dioxides.2010, BioWare, Mass Effect 2 (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Kruban
    Synonyms:
    greenhouse
    Antonyms:
    icehouse

Verb

hothouse (third-person singular simple present hothouses, present participle hothousing, simple past and past participle hothoused)

  1. (transitive) To provide (a child) with an enriched environment with the aim of stimulating academic development.
    • she had such an exceptional grasp of maths in her first two years at the school theyʼd been hothousing her to sit her GCSE Maths two years early2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 245

hothouse meaning in Urdu and Malayalam

hothouse in Urdu

hothouse, greenhouse, glasshouse
گرم خانہ garm xāna

hothouse in Malayalam

glasshouse, greenhouse, conservatory
സസ്യോഷ്ണശാല, സസ്യങ്ങൾ വളർത്തുന്നതിനുള്ള കണ്ണാടി വീട്, കണ്ണാടി വീട്, ചില്ലുമന്ദിരം, സ്ഫടികമന്ദിരം, സംരക്ഷണാലയം
oppressive, intense, stifling
ഹരിതഗൃഹമായ, അതിശ്രദ്ധയുള്ള, തീക്ഷണമായ, ശ്വാസംമുട്ടിക്കുന്ന, ഞെരുക്കുന്ന, ദുസ്സഹമായ

Synonyms of hothouse

Antonyms

Forms of hothouse

Noun
pluralhothouses
alternative formhot-house
Verb
third-person singular presenthothouses
present participlehothousing
past participlehothoused
pasthothoused

Origin of hothouse

From Middle English hothous, equivalent to hot + house.

Words formed from hothouse

Phrases with hothouse

Questions about hothouse

What does hothouse mean?
Hothouse means a heated greenhouse.
What is hothouse in Urdu?
Hothouse in Urdu is گرم خانہ (garm xāna). See Hothouse meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is hothouse?
Hothouse can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of hothouse?
The plural of hothouse is hothouses.

Words near hothouse in the dictionary

  1. hotheadedness
  2. hotheads
  3. hothearted
  4. Hothersall
  5. Hothfield
  6. hothouse
  7. hothouse effect
  8. hothouse effects
  9. hothouse flower
  10. hothouse flowers
  11. hothoused

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hothouse (page history and authors); گرم خانہ (Urdu) (page history and authors); hothouse (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: “hothouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hothouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.