Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏦 Bank exchange center 🔄 Distribution center
clearing house

clearing house

1 4.8
An organization that collects and shares information or payments between other groups
  • noun
  • /ˈklɪrɪŋ haʊs/
  • Specialized
translation icon : agencia de compensación
  • The generators are expected to submit price bids for every power station to a central dispatcher or a clearing house which, in the next instance, schedules the least-cost combinations of stations to meet demand in the system.

He suggested that the trusts work together and pool some funds to form a clearing house so that they could bail each other out.

Examples

  • National Power and PowerGen, in the short run, can exercise their market power without any explicit collusion by offering to the clearing house supply schedules that are above the marginal operating costs.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Table 2 uses data from the Welfare Council of New York City's Central Bureau for the Care of the Aged, which opened in 1927 to operate a clearing house for 52 of the metropolitan area's 79 homes.

    Academic text (1992)

  • He suggested that the trusts work together and pool some funds to form a clearing house so that they could bail each other out.

    Patrick Boyle

  • Since Michelangelo, criticism has in recent years become a kind of clearing house for theories of art criticism and art history; it says something for the adequacy of our seven-part paradigm that it is able to accommodate and systematize this diversity.

    Academic text (1992)

  • The new organization will serve as a clearing house for all financial transactions between the partner companies.

  • After the merger, the bank became the main clearing house for processing loans and payments in the region.

  • The nonprofit acts as a clearing house for donations, distributing funds to various local charities in need.

Synonyms

clearinghouse
vsclearing house
  • Specialized
14 4.6

A place or organization that collects and sends information and payments between groups

has identical function but is written as two separate words
clearer
vsclearing house
  • UK
6.4

A person or organization that settles payments between banks

includes broader collecting and distributing beyond just financial settlement

Surface Forms

clearing house singular
clearing houses plural

Morphology

clearing + house

The compound is partly compositional: 'house' as a firm and 'clearing' in the sense of removing or settling obligations gives a clue that it is an organization that settles transactions. However, the sense of 'clearing' here is a specialised/financial one (not the everyday 'removing particles from a liquid'), so a B1 learner who only knows the common meanings of the constituents would likely need prior exposure or domain knowledge to arrive at the full institutional meaning.

Etymology

Clearing house may also mean any organization that collects and sends out items or information. The name comes from the image of a 'house' that clears things by sorting and passing them on, so today it means a place that 'collects and distributes' items, information, or payments between groups.