[OE. wínhús = MLG., MDu., MHG. wînhûs (Du. wijnhuis, G. weinhaus), ON. vínhús.]
1. A public house where wine is drunk. Now chiefly Hist. or with particular local reference.
1607. Dekker & Webster, Westw. Hoe, II. i. From him come I, to intreate you to meet him this afternoon at the Rhenesh-wine-house ith Stillyard.
1621. in Foster, Engl. Factories Ind. (1906), 355. Our warehowse roome, dyninge roome, and wyne howse.
1655. Vaughan, Silex Scint., Agreement, 19. Thou [sc. the Bible] art the oyl and the wine-house.
1660. Pepys, Diary, 24 Nov. Creed and Shepley and I to the Rhenish winehouse, and there I did give them two quarts of Wormwood wine, and so we broke up.
1805. C. James, Milit. Dict. (ed. 2), Wine-houses, certain places of resort in the garrison of Gibraltar, from which the governor has been accustomed to derive a pecuniary profit.
1816. Keatinge, Trav., I. 50. [In Spain] It is disgraceful to be seen entering a wine-house.
1909. Westm. Gaz., 30 April, 5/3. The wine-house known as the White Hart in the Euston-road.
2. A house that deals in wine; a firm of wine-merchants.
1834. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Boarding-ho., ii. A clerk in a wine-house.
1875. Ures Dict. Arts, III. 1140. No natural Sherry comes to this country; no wine house will send it.