hothouse

1 of 2

noun

hot·​house ˈhät-ˌhau̇s How to pronounce hothouse (audio)
1
: a greenhouse maintained at a high temperature especially for the culture of tropical plants
2
3
obsolete : brothel

hothouse

2 of 2

adjective

1
: grown in a hothouse
2
: suggestive of growth and development in a hothouse
a hothouse existence
also : suggesting a hothouse
a hothouse atmosphere

Examples of hothouse in a Sentence

Noun grows tomatoes in his hothouse all winter long an urban enclave of bohemians that acquired a reputation for being a hothouse of creativity
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
The seamstress eventually left the hothouse environment of Washington to run the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts for Ohio’s Wilberforce University, the first college in the U.S. owned and operated by African Americans. Alicia Ault, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2024 Ball pythons have come to be seen as unnatural, hothouse creatures. Rebecca Giggs, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024 Jawaharlal Nehru University, named for India’s first prime minister, is one of the country’s premier liberal institutions, a hothouse of strong opinions and left-leaning values whose graduates populate the upper echelons of academia and government. Sameer Yasir, New York Times, 10 Feb. 2024 At Harvard and similar schools, some 98 percent of undergraduates live on campus, basting in a progressive hothouse where there’s a patina of intense busyness but not much actual work. Frederick M. Hess, National Review, 21 Dec. 2023 When the planet warmed again, it was plunged into a hothouse phase that unleashed phosphates, oxygen, and other elements necessary to build multicellular life. Howard Lee, Ars Technica, 15 May 2023 In 2017, Chinese conglomerate Zhejiang Geely Holding Group took controlling interest in the 75-year-old manufacturing concern, based in Hethel, England, and has since spent more than $2 billion turning smoky, drafty old Lotus into Lotus Technology, a luxury electric hothouse. Dan Neil, WSJ, 14 Dec. 2023 Since opening 20 years ago, the center’s Frank Gehry building has emerged as a hothouse for the creation of uncompromising, cross-disciplinary and sometimes hard to describe hits. Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, 5 July 2023 The current Hollywood strikes have a precedent in Disney’s golden age, when the company was a hothouse of innovation and punishing expectation. Jennifer Wilson, The New York Review of Books, 14 Sep. 2023
Adjective
Fracas, fittingly beloved by personality-plus women such as Madonna, Martha Stewart, and Isabella Blow, dials the heady, hothouse opulence of tuberose up to 11 with the addition of jasmine, tonka bean, and musk. April Long, Town & Country, 13 Sep. 2019 These fragile and artificial economies require hothouse conditions that a weakened OPEC can no longer provide. Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 11 Dec. 2017

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hothouse.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

Noun

1556, in the meaning defined at sense 3

Adjective

1771, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of hothouse was in 1556

Dictionary Entries Near hothouse

Cite this Entry

“Hothouse.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hothouse. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

hothouse

noun
hot·​house
-ˌhau̇s
: a heated greenhouse
hothouse adjective

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