molly house
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.86 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A tavern or other establishment in 18th and 19th century England where homosexuals could meet for various activities, such as cross-dressing and sexual encounters.
Slang
noun
Alternative form of molly house.
noun
Alternative form of molly house.
Example Sentences
- "Just west of Charing Cross (where a molly named Tolson kept a brandy shop in the late 1720s, and where Whale and Horner were pilloried for keeping a molly house), we come to St James's Square and Pall Mall, ..."
- "In a vivid illustration of the dynamics created by sexual deviance, molly houses were a defense against the pressures of prejudice, but their visibility inspired new hostility."
- "One visitor to a molly house in the Old Bailey observed “men calling one another 'my dear' and hugging, kissing, and tickling each other as if they were a mixture of wanton males and females, and assuming effeminate voices and airs."
- "Just — we must fuck who we will. Else what's the point of a molly house?"
- "The London party ends with the guests departed and the disillusioned Will casting a dispirited eye over the dregs of the hollow revelry, and the final scene returns to the Molly House, where Mrs. Tull, her fortune made, gives up her new name and her new business to retire to the country to apparent heterosexual happiness with her long-time admirer, the Princess."
- "'Molly Houses' — places where homosexual men gather— may have been around as early as 1700: this is where the historian Rictor Norton in fact locates the origins of a gay subculture in England (Norton 1992)."