Playhouse

How to spell playhouse

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce playhouse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does playhouse mean?

1. nounA theatre, especially a building used for staging plays.
2. nounA small structure or toy house in which children play.

Playhouse in a sentence

• The touring company performed at the old playhouse on the high street.

• He built a wooden playhouse for the children at the bottom of the garden.

• Tickets for the new comedy at the playhouse sold out within hours.

• The toddlers spent the afternoon serving pretend tea inside the playhouse.

Where does playhouse come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Playhouse is a native English compound joining two very old Anglo-Saxon words. The first element, play, comes from Old English plega and the verb plegan, which meant to exercise oneself, to engage in brisk activity, and later to take part in games or sport. The second element, house, descends from Old English hus, the ordinary word for a dwelling or building, a word shared across the Germanic languages. Joined together, the compound first named a building put up for theatrical performances, a sense common from the 1500s when the great Elizabethan playhouses such as the Globe were built. Over time it also came to mean a small structure or toy house where children pretend and play, the meaning many people meet first today. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises beyond remembering it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• play (from Old English plega: game, sport)
• house (from Old English hus: dwelling)