Barrelhouse

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A rough-and-tumble drinking establishment.

    "It’s beautiful, but never naïvely so; the pastoral moments were offset by barrelhouse intrusions."

  2. 2
    a cheap drinking and dancing establishment wordnet
  3. 3
    A loud, percussive type of blues piano suitable for noisy bars or taverns.

    "A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers."

Synonyms

All synonyms
honky tonkhonky-tonkjukejukejuke joint

Example

More examples

"It’s beautiful, but never naïvely so; the pastoral moments were offset by barrelhouse intrusions."

Etymology

From barrel + house. Originally used to refer specifically to a bar that served whiskey directly from the barrel.

Related phrases

honky tonkrough and tumble

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.