courthousen.
1. A building in which courts of law are held.Common in U.S. (cf. sense 3).
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society > law > administration of justice > judicial body, assembly, or court > place where court is held > [noun] > courthouse
doom-housec1000
speech-housec1050
tolsel1373
porcha1382
pleading house1440
courthouse1483
plead housec1485
pleading place1565
law-housea1610
county hall1670
judiciary1681
Palais de Justice1792
plea-house1818
doom-hall1870
1483 Cath. Angl. 79 A Cowrthouse.
1667 Mass. Col. Recs. (1854) IV. ii. 351 For the necessary..repaire of the Toune or Court House in Boston.
1683 in Maryland Hist. Mag. (1906) 1 5 Ordered that Mr. Miles Gibson..have power and authority to employ carpenters for repairing the Court house.
1776 Virginia Hist. Coll. 31 Mar. VI. 159 To be Call'd on the Parade Nere the Court House to-morrow.
1815 D. Drake Nat. & Statist. View Cincinnati i. 38 Its only public building of note is a stone court house.
1818 W. Scott Heart of Mid-Lothian ii, in Tales of my Landlord 2nd Ser. III. 34 She had looked anxiously for Butler in the court-house.
1856 J. G. Baldwin Flush Times Alabama 159 A lawyer's office..was a public a place as the courthouse.
1875 W. McIlwraith Guide Wigtownshire 33 At the east side of the Square [in Wigtown] is the new Court-house.
1884 ‘C. E. Craddock’ Tenn. Mts. i. 59 A flag floated from the roof of the courthouse.
2. A manorial dwelling: cf. court n.1 2 (English regional (southern)).
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1857 G. Oliver Coll. Hist. Catholic Relig. Cornwall 60 Cannington..Lord Clifford frequently resided at its noble Court-house.
3. U.S. (chiefly southern). = county seat n. at county n.1 and adj. Compounds 7.
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1856 F. L. Olmsted Journey Slave States (1859) 80 She went to a Sunday-school at the Court House.
1860 J. R. Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (ed. 3) (at cited word) The county towns of Virginia are often called so without regard to their proper names. Thus Providence, the county town of Fairfax, is unknown by that name, and passes as Fairfax Court-House.
1887 C. W. Super in N.Y. Nation 27 Oct. 331 The word court-house for county-seat is probably of Southern origin, though there are at least two county-seats in Ohio that still retain this designation.
Compounds
attributive.
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1836 Southern Literary Messenger 2 434/1 The moveable and excitable throng of a court-house-green.
1855 M. Thompson Doesticks v. 35 [I] took a last look at its town-pump, its grocery, and its court-house square.
1884 ‘C. E. Craddock’ Tenn. Mts. ii. 117 To the court-house fence were hitched several lean, forlorn horses.
1899 B. Tarkington Gentleman from Indiana i. 2 Here stood the old red-brick court-house, loosely fenced in a shady grove of maple and elm..called the ‘Court-House Yard’.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1893; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
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