the big house

noun

US slang

: a building where people are kept as punishment for a crime : prison

He spent four years in the big house.

Examples of the big house in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But this wasn’t the big house of some art collector hosting a dinner during the Hamptons high season. — Nate Freeman, Vanity Fair, 21 Aug. 2026

My wife really wanted to go back to England to the big house, and that was the beginning of her alcoholism. — Devon Ivie, Vulture, 19 Aug. 2026

Before the August 2025 move to the big house, aka the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Miami, Thomas owned up to his transgressions. — Madeleine Marr, Miami Herald, 27 Feb. 2026

Enslavers’ fortunes and lives depended on being able to control the able-bodied Black men and women who outnumbered them—20, 40, 60 Black bodies crammed into slave shacks, versus maybe a dozen white family members in the big house. — Eugene Robinson, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2026

Rhymes for the big house

• boardinghouse
• charterhouse
• clearinghouse
• coffeehouse
• customhouse
• firehouse
• meetinghouse
• motherhouse
• packinghouse
• pilothouse
• powerhouse
• slaughterhouse