sweat house
- noun
- /swɛt haʊs/
- UK
:
casa de sudor
- In ancient cultures, people often used a sweat house for spiritual purification and health rituals.
Examples
-
After the long hike, they decided to relax in the sweat house to rejuvenate their bodies.
-
Melanie's papa is chopping wood for the sweat house.
Fiction book (2001) -
Old Peter had some sort of sweat house down by his place.
Fiction book (1993) -
The tribe gathered at the sweat house for a traditional cleansing ceremony.
Synonyms
52
2.1
A small hot room where people sit to sweat and relax
24
3.0
A public building where people wash and change clothes, often by a beach or pool
12
3.7
A room filled with hot steam where people sit to relax
4
3.2
A hot room filled with steam where you sit to relax and ease muscle pain
A room where people sit in hot steam to sweat
A hot room like a sauna where steam makes you sweat and relax
A hot room filled with steam for cleaning and relaxing the body
How Hot
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: a B1 learner who knows 'sweat' (to perspire) and 'house' (a building) can infer a building used for sweating or steam baths. This follows common English patterns (e.g. 'bathhouse', 'sauna') and has cross-linguistic parallels, so the meaning is immediately recoverable from the parts.
Etymology
Sweat house comes from a simple image: a small house where people go to sweat by sitting in steam for health or a ritual. That's why it means 'a hut or small building used for steam baths and purification'.