Word.ws English Dictionary

lockup house

lockup house noun: a small house where people are kept in temporary custody after arrest, especially where debtors are held before transfer to a debtors' prison.

Noun

lockup house (plural lockup houses)

  1. (historical) A small house where people are kept in temporary custody after arrest, especially where debtors are held before transfer to a debtors' prison.
    • He kept a lock-up house in Great Earle Street, Soho, and, although by profession a tailor, he had fitted it up most elegantly as a tavern.1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 143
  2. (colloquial, historical, obsolete) A lodging house where men are kept and forced to enlist in the army or navy.

Forms of lockup house

plurallockup houses

Questions about lockup house

What does lockup house mean?
Lockup house means a small house where people are kept in temporary custody after arrest, especially where debtors are held before transfer to a debtors' prison.
What part of speech is lockup house?
Lockup house is a noun.
What is the plural of lockup house?
The plural of lockup house is lockup houses.

Words near lockup house in the dictionary

  1. locktails
  2. locktender
  3. locktenders
  4. Locktober
  5. lockup
  6. lockup house
  7. lockup houses
  8. lockups
  9. Lockwood
  10. Lockwood South
  11. Lockwoods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lockup 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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