workhouse means An institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 83 out of 100.
Why this word is great
WORKHOUSE — [Noun] An institution for the poor, funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work. From Middle English werkhous, from Old English weorchūs ("workshop, place of manufacture"), from Proto-Germanic *werkahūsą, equivalent to work + house. Unlike "poorhouse" (which sheltered the infirm and destitute) or "factory" (a neutral site of industry), the workhouse was a mechanism of moral coercion, where poverty was punished under the guise of charity. It is the scrape of a scrubbing brush on stone floors, the rasp of oakum fibers against raw fingertips, and the relentless clatter of the treadwheel—a place where labor was not livelihood but penance, proof that dignity could be ground as fine as bone meal.
noun
- An institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work.“Among other public buildings in a certain town which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, it boasts of one which is common to most towns, great or small, to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born, […] the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.”
- A prison in which the sentence includes manual labour.
- A place of manufacture; a factory.“He carefully guarded his secret, but it got out, and, when he had his invention almost completed, some men broke open his workhouse and carried it away. It was afterward returned, but his plan had been copied, and from the copy many machines were made.”
verb
- To place (a person) in the workhouse (institution for the poor).