English

Noun

glasshouse ‎(plural glasshouses)

1. A building made of glass in which plants are grown more rapidly than outside such a building by the action of heat from the sun, this heat being trapped inside by the glass (chiefly commercial).
2. A building where glass or glassware is manufactured.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess:

     The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.

3. (Britain military slang)  A military prison.

Synonyms

• greenhouse (chiefly domestic)

Translations