Word.ws English Dictionary

house of correction

house of correction noun: a kind of residential penitentiary facility, built after the passing of the Elizabethan Poor Law (1601), where those who were "unwilling to work", including vagrants and beggars, were set to work.

Noun

house of correction (plural houses of correction)

  1. (UK, historical) A kind of residential penitentiary facility, built after the passing of the Elizabethan Poor Law (1601), where those who were "unwilling to work", including vagrants and beggars, were set to work.
  2. (US, Massachusetts, Maryland) A prison.

Forms of house of correction

pluralhouses of correction

Questions about house of correction

What does house of correction mean?
House of correction means a kind of residential penitentiary facility, built after the passing of the Elizabethan Poor Law (1601), where those who were "unwilling to work", including vagrants and beggars, were set to work.
What part of speech is house of correction?
House of correction is a noun.
What is the plural of house of correction?
The plural of house of correction is houses of correction.

Words near house of correction in the dictionary

  1. house of assignation
  2. House of Burgesses
  3. house of call
  4. house of cards
  5. house of commons
  6. house of correction
  7. House of Delegates
  8. house of detention
  9. house of ease
  10. house of easement
  11. House of God

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: house of correction (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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