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Glite Dictionary
whole house

whole house

49 1.6
All parts and rooms of a house taken together as one
  • noun
translation icon : casa entera
  • They'd had the whole house renovated when they bought it eight years ago.
  • clean the whole house
  • search the whole house
  • look around the whole house

James checks the whole house top to bottom.

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Examples

  • And so our whole house burned down as we were minimizing.

  • After the renovation, the whole house was finally ready for the family to move in.

  • So now that I showed you my whole house, I think you know where this is going.

  • You could have the whole house!

    Marvin's Room (1996)

  • Did you know you can have whole houses built in just a matter of months?

    Fiction book (1999)

  • James checks the whole house top to bottom.

    Tati

  • The bedroom, the kitchen, the whole house was empty without her and yet somehow filled with her presence.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • We have a whole house to decorate.

    Barely Legal (2011)

  • But I think this makes her real happy, because now she's got the whole house to herself.

    Boys on the Side (1995)

  • The whole house is stuffy.

    The Painted Veil (1934)

Synonyms

house
vswhole house
∞ 1.0

A building where one family lives

is about the entire building including every part and room as one unit
dwelling house
vswhole house
2.8

A house or building where people live, not a business building

does not stress commercial versus residential use but focuses on the building as a unit

Antonyms

room
∞ 1.0

An area in a building with walls, a floor, and a ceiling

How Complete

estate
553 4.2
whole house
49 1.6
apartment
  • US
∞ 1.0
room
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

whole house singular
whole houses plural

Morphology

whole + house

The phrase is a straightforward adjectival modification where 'whole' (entirety) applies to 'house' (building), so the combined meaning 'the entire house' is directly and predictably derivable from the constituent words. This adjective+noun compositional pattern is common across languages and follows standard English grammar, making it immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner who knows both words.

Etymology

Whole house comes from the simple image of a house where whole means all of it together. So when people say whole house they mean 'the entire building', every room and part as one unit.