ramshackle house

Examples

• All

• Scientists and city officials go crazy when they see these ramshackle houses made of bricks, blocks, and animal skins, sprouting like mushrooms beneath their very eyes.

  Fiction book (2000)

• Here he emphasizes the image of el solar, a patio or yard crowded with people of all races and surrounded by ramshackle houses, as a figure for the Caribbean as a whole.

  Academic text (1996)

• His first time with a woman was when he was twenty-five with a prostitute in a large ramshackle house in South Bend.

  Fiction book (1996)

• Indeed, the biggest trouble I ever got into with my grandfather was on account of Henry Jones, an ancient black man who lived with his wife, Mollie, in a ramshackle house behind my grandparents' place.

  Academic text (1999)

• Unless, of course, it's the squalid apartment that the celebrity lived in before he or she was a celebrity, like William Shatner's old, ramshackle house in Hastings-on-Hudson.

  Blog text (20)

• "Don't hold your breath." Walter Demming's gravel driveway led to a tiny, ramshackle house with stained green siding and warped window frames.

  Fiction book (1995)

• Black-Hired Ba-Chan lived further to the north in a ramshackle house, partly hidden from the street by overgrown blackberry bushes and shrubs, and so small that she and Pappa had to share a room when he was growing up.

  Fiction book (1992)

• Just like your local historical society fights to save from demolition a ramshackle house that Abraham Lincoln himself may—or may not—have spent a night in while passing through town, we traditionalists fight to save any and all fleeting memories of the ballparks of the past.

  Blog text (26)

• Mildred parked in the shade near a ramshackle house with sagging gutters and a plank front porch.

• Her boyfriend looked older; he probably lived off campus with twenty other guys in some ramshackle house with a couch in the front yard.

Synonyms

C

complete shitheap

vsramshackle house

• Offensive

1 9.9

Something in very bad condition and nearly falling apart

is less informal and names a dwelling in bad repair, often near collapse

D

doomstead

vsramshackle house

9.9

An abandoned house left to fall apart after a disaster

is about a poorly maintained structure likely to collapse, not only abandoned

Antonyms

S

sturdy

79 2.1

Strong and solid so it does not break easily

W

well-kept

21 1.8

Neat and in good condition because someone looks after it

How Dilapidated

derelict

13 7.5

ramshackle house

1 5.3

run-down

18 4.5

worn

111 2.1

well-kept

21 1.8

Surface Forms

Morphology

Etymology