sod house
1
8.4
- noun
- /sɑd haʊs/
- Archaic
:
casa de tierra
- Shame, my forebears, including one of my grandfathers, lived in log and sod houses on the prairie.
- build a sod house
Examples
-
During the harsh winter, the family found warmth and shelter in their sod house built from layers of thick grass.
-
I suppose you might try solar sod houses and hydroponic tomato gardening where applicable.
Blog text (32) -
We got the sod house over there.
-
Draw a picture showing the inside of a sod house with the furnishings.
Academic text (1994) -
The main character, Louisa, and her family live in a sod house.
Academic text (1994) -
Boys, there's an abandoned sod house back around that bend.
-
In his sod house, Kenai looks out his one tiny window at the curtain of snow.
Fiction book (1993) -
You know, I've seen old photographs of that plain without the sod house, and it's really weird 'cause it's like you recognize it, but it's really different.
-
The house barely seemed to emerge from the earth, a northern plains house, a variant of the sod house in which you hunker down against the sky.
Academic text (2001) -
To create a sturdy sod house, settlers used blocks of sod stacked horizontally to form the walls.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A building where one family lives
1
3.8
A house made from sun-dried earth and straw bricks
1
9.9
A house that early settlers build from blocks of earth with grass roots
A house or building where people live, not a business building
How Durable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a house built from blocks of sod' is directly and compositionally derived from 'sod' (turf/earth blocks) + 'house' (a dwelling): material + object is a common, predictable noun-noun compounding pattern. Cross-linguistically and in everyday morphology this construction signals the building's material, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The name sod house comes from life on the open plains where settlers cut blocks of sod, meaning grass and soil, and stacked them like bricks to build a house. So, sod house means 'a house made from earth'.