Dictionary

bloodhouse en · NOUN

Etymology

From blood + house.

Meanings

1. A building where violent, bloody brawls are common.
   • The conditions and service offered varied: some were ‘bloodhouses’; others, such as that at Parramatta owned by James Larra, provided fine food, good drink and warm hospitality to their customers. 1990, Douglass Baglin, Yvonne Austin, The Great Aussie Pub Crawl, Child & Associates, →ISBN, page 19:
   • There are still a few bloodhouses, as the rowdier institutions are called, patronized exclusively by men; 1985, Tony Allan, editor, Australia, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 131:
   • From the bloodhouses of my youth, vagrant hotels, I see your face / Dead girl (dear Jan!) in smoke-filled rooms—glass-littered slimy floors. 1972, Geoffrey Lehmann, Conversation with a Rider, Angus and Robertson, →ISBN, page 43:
   • City hotels favoured by the homosexually inclined ranged in style from the swank Australia Hotel to ‘blood-houses’ like the Belfields. 2016, Garry Wotherspoon, Gay Sydney: A History, NewSouth Publishing, →ISBN:
   • ‘[…]Not,’ she elaborated with ponderous wistfulness, ‘that I don’t enjoy an occasional slumming expedition to the bloodhouses. Graham won’t use a bar that isn’t full of men in grubby singlets;[…]’ 1961, George Turner, A Stranger and Afraid, London: Cassell, page 40:
   • Compared to those bloodhouses, the El Rocco was a beacon of sophistication. 2007, Michael Caulfield, The Vietnam Years: From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs, Hachette Australia, →ISBN:
   • A lot of the traffic had been diverted from Crown and Bourke streets, cafes and restaurants had sprung up and the local pubs that had been either bloodhouses or Indie music venues had become gastro pubs serving twice-cooked pork belly and confit duck to bankers, advertising types and media people. 2017, Michael Brissenden, The List, Hachette Australia, →ISBN:
   • […]negative environmental factors that make some establishments bloodhouses year after year and many more establishments violent on a less predictable basis. 1992, Journal of Drug Issues, page 682:
   • The Imperial Hotel was now the meeting place for the “gay” community. These pubs were no longer the boisterous, noisy, and often “bloodhouses” of old. 2017, Steve Langley, Erskineville to the Bush, BookVenture Publishing LLC, →ISBN, page 41:
   • Their sound had been honed in the bloodhouses of Hamburg; it was raw and primal and unashamedly sexual. 2021, Jeff Apter, Behind Dark Eyes: The True Story of John English, Woodslane Press, →ISBN:
   • The old riverfront where steamers used to move passengers and cargo is graced by pubs with lacy verandas that look old, quiet and innocent to the passer-by but still bear a reputation as ‘bloodhouses’ where more than one drug haul has come in up the river from the east. 1988, Nick Lush, Australia, →ISBN, page 203:

Forms