Word.ws English Dictionary

sponging-house

sponging-house noun: a place of temporary confinement for debtors, kept by a bailiff, where debtors were sponged of all money they had on themselves, before being transferred to debtor's prison.

Noun

sponging-house (plural sponging-houses)

  1. (historical) A place of temporary confinement for debtors, kept by a bailiff, where debtors were sponged of all money they had on themselves, before being transferred to debtor's prison.
    • she perswaded the Creditors to send Two Bayliffs, who carry'd me to a Spunging-House in a very weak Condition […]1723, Charles Walker, Memoirs of Sally Salisbury, section VI
    • '[…] Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt […]'1811, Jane Austen, chapter 31, in Sense and Sensibility

Forms of sponging-house

pluralsponging-houses
alternative form (archaic)spunging-house

Questions about sponging-house

What does sponging-house mean?
Sponging-house means a place of temporary confinement for debtors, kept by a bailiff, where debtors were sponged of all money they had on themselves, before being transferred to debtor's prison.
What part of speech is sponging-house?
Sponging-house is a noun.
What is the plural of sponging-house?
The plural of sponging-house is sponging-houses.

Words near sponging-house in the dictionary

  1. sponging down
  2. sponging house
  3. sponging houses
  4. sponging out
  5. sponging up
  6. sponging-house
  7. sponging-houses
  8. spongings
  9. spongins
  10. spongio-
  11. spongioblast

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sponging-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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