doll's housen.
A miniature toy house made for dolls; also transferred and figurative, applied esp. to a diminutive dwelling-house. Also attributive.
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society > leisure > entertainment > toy or plaything > other toys > [noun] > doll's house
baby house1725
doll's house?1783
?1783 Lady E. Fenn Cobwebs to catch Flies I. 90 I have a chest at home, in my doll's house.
1840 C. Dickens Let. 31 July (1969) II. 109 I don't believe there is anywhere such a perfect little doll's house as this... The garden flourishing, the road lively, the rooms free from creeping things.
1842 C. Dickens Amer. Notes I. iii. 113 Like articles of furniture for a pauper doll's-house.
1847 C. Brontë Jane Eyre I. iv. 47 Some picture books and doll's house furniture.
1853 C. Dickens Bleak House vi. 57 A habitable doll's house..would set the boy up in life.
1855 Fraser's Mag. July 60/2 Each of these doll-house rooms is crowded with prints, [etc.].
1865 C. Dickens Our Mutual Friend II. iv. v. 198 ‘We live on Blackheath, in the charm-ingest of dolls' houses...’ But Bella started up. ‘I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll's house.’
1882 H. F. Lord tr. Ibsen Nora p. v The play now given to us as Nora is called in Norwegian Et Dukkehjem. To a public unused to Ibsen's surprises, A Doll's House is a misleading title.
1903 G. B. Shaw Man & Superman Ep. Ded. p. xi Doña Juana, breaking out of the Doll's House and asserting herself as an individual.
1925 W. Deeping Sorrell & Son xxiv. 233 Christopher spent a week-end with Thomas Roland in his doll's house at Chelsea.
1928 F. N. Hart Bellamy Trial ii. 44 He'd made Polly a wonderful doll house.
1959 Chambers's Encycl. XIII. 709/2 An interesting adjunct of doll-land is the doll's house.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1933; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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n.?1783