Word.ws English Dictionary

sponging house

sponging house is the alternative form of sponging-house.

Meaning of sponging-house

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

Forms of sponging house

pluralsponging houses

Questions about sponging house

What is sponging house the alternative form of?
Sponging house is the alternative form of sponging-house.

Words near sponging house in the dictionary

  1. spongily
  2. spongin
  3. sponginess
  4. sponging
  5. sponging down
  6. sponging house
  7. sponging houses
  8. sponging out
  9. sponging up
  10. sponging-house
  11. sponging-houses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sponging house (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “sponging house.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sponging_house. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.