DCHP-1 Online

ice-house

• 1 n. a structure usually having insulated walls and roof, used as a storage place for meat and other perishables, the refrigerant being blocks of ice.

  See also: hangard (def. 2)  

  • 1792  (1911)  They use the ice to cool liquors and butter, and the ice houses are used for larders to keep meat.
  • 1832  (1953)  When we had completed the house, we raised a barn . . . with an ice-house, root house, and summer dairy beneath it. . . .
  • 1934  . . . there was always a large ice-house full of ice so that everything brought in could be kept fresh.
  • 1963  The southeast and northwest bastions were ice-houses.

• 2 n. a domed structure built of blocks of hard snow; an Eskimo snowhouse. (a misnomer, for igloos are made of blocks of snow rather than ice).

  See also: igloo (def. 1a)  

  • 1857  The remains of two ice houses yet existed, but were rapidly thawing away, under the influence of the heat of the sun.
  • 1961  As in years past, Pelly Bay's 125 Eskimos will build an ice house for their Christmas Mass. As children watch, the men tramp out a circle in the snow, then make six igloos of ordinary size. They fill the spaces in between with snow blocks, raising a dome 15 feet high. Then the inside walls are cut away.