A house, other than an inn or hotel, in which lodgings are let.
1766. Smollett, Trav., I. viii. 139. I was directed to a lodging house at Lyons, which being full they shewed us to a tavern.
1814. Bisset, Guide to Leamington, 23. Every house in Leamington (the Author’s and two others excepted) are appropriated as Lodging or Boarding Houses.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xvi. One street of gloomy lodging-houses.
1891. C. T. C. James, Rigmarole, 94. Elise, old, worn, haggard, and dying in a common lodging-house close by.
attrib. c. 1815. Jane Austen, Persuas. (1833), I. xi. 300. Captain Harville did his best to supply the deficiencies of lodging-house furniture.
1848. Dickens, Dombey, vi. Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner.
b. transf. and fig.
1851. Borrow, Lavengro, xcviii. (1900), 534. It seems all the drains and sewers of the place run into that same salt basin … on which account the town is a famous lodging-house of the plague.
1858. J. Martineau, Stud. Chr., 206. Temporary settlers and mercantile agents … to whom Italy was a lodging-house rather than a home.
