Meaning & use
workhouse
A historical institution, especially in Britain, where poor people lived and performed labor in exchange for food and shelter.
See it in a sentence
Charles Dickens wrote vividly about the harsh conditions inside the Victorian workhouse.
Families with no income were often sent to the local workhouse in the nineteenth century.
A note on using this word
Workhouses were largely a British and Irish institution of the 1700s to 1900s and are rarely used to describe anything modern.
Words with a similar meaning
poorhouse
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