garden house

English

Alternative forms

garden-house

Noun

garden house (plural garden houses)

1. A summerhouse.
   • 1606, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, “The Woman-Hater”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, Act II, scene i:

     this is no garden-house

2. (US, Southern US) A privy.
3. (India, historical) An Anglo-Indian suburban villa.
   • 1912, Lal Behari Dey, Folk-tales of Bengal, Life's Secret:

     When Dalim became reanimated at night he ate whatever food he liked, for of such there was a plentiful stock in the garden-house, walked about on the premises, and meditated on the singularity of his lot.

References

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “garden house”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)