doll's house
1
2.1
- noun
- /dɑlz haʊs/
- Baby Talk
:
casita de muñecas
- The children spent hours playing with the doll's house in the living room.
Examples
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She received a beautiful doll's house for her birthday, complete with miniature furniture.
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Look at the doll's house.
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Just like a doll's house.
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It's like a doll's house.
Fiction book (1999) -
Gee, I sure never had a doll's house like this when I was a kid.
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That doll's house?
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My sister used to love arranging her dolls in the doll's house every afternoon.
Synonyms
16
1.0
A small model of a house with tiny furniture for children to play with
How Detailed
Surface Forms
Morphology
doll's + house
The meaning 'a small model house for dolls' is directly derivable from combining 'doll's' (the possessive form of 'doll', indicating belonging or purpose) with 'house' — i.e. a house for dolls, typically a miniature toy. This possessive + noun composition and the idea of a scaled-down toy are cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Doll's house comes from the simple idea of a doll's house — a tiny house made for dolls to live in. These small, often decorated models were toys for children, so today the phrase means 'a small model house used as a toy'.