Morthouse
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A specialised secure building usually located in a churchyard where bodies were temporarily interred before a formal funeral took place.
"That the bodies of all persons dying in these towns, and, if need be, in all other towns, and also in country parishes, unclaimable by immediate relatives, or whose relatives decline to defray the expenses of interment, shall be conveyed to a morthouse appointed in the said towns for their reception."
Example
More examples"That the bodies of all persons dying in these towns, and, if need be, in all other towns, and also in country parishes, unclaimable by immediate relatives, or whose relatives decline to defray the expenses of interment, shall be conveyed to a morthouse appointed in the said towns for their reception."
Etymology
From mort (“death”) + house. Compare mort bell, mort cloth, mort stone.
More for "morthouse"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.