Beerhouse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A tavern or pub where people go to buy and drink beer, often a simple, old-fashioned drinking place
2. An establishment licensed to serve beer to customers who sit and drink it on the premises
3. A small public house or bar whose main business is selling beer for drinking on site

Etymology: Beerhouse is a plain compound: "beer" joined to "house," and it has been built that way for a long time. The word goes back to Old English "bēorhūs," which combined "bēor" (beer) with "hūs" (house), and the same pairing appears in the Germanic languages of the period. By the Middle English era it had become "beerhouse," so the structure has barely changed in the better part of a thousand years. The surprise lies less in the parts than in the fact that the two halves have stayed so stable while the institution around them shifted. A beerhouse was simply a place where beer was sold and drunk, and the English word carried that sense from its earliest recorded forms onward. Its ancestor, Proto-West Germanic "*beuʀahūs," was the common ancestor of the same compound in neighbouring languages, which is why the word looks so familiar across the family.

Synonyms: pub, tavern, alehouse, taproom, bar