Word.ws English Dictionary

spunging-house

spunging-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 spunging-house

pluralspunging-houses

Questions about spunging-house

What is spunging-house the alternative form of?
Spunging-house is the alternative form of sponging-house.

Words near spunging-house in the dictionary

  1. spunged
  2. spunger
  3. spungers
  4. spunges
  5. spunging
  6. spunging-house
  7. spunging-houses
  8. spunion
  9. spunions
  10. spunk
  11. spunk off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spunging-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: “spunging-house.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spunging-house. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.