chophouse

See also: chop house

English

Alternative forms

• chop house

Etymology

From chop +‎ house. For Chinese customs sense, see chop (“quality”).

Noun

chophouse (plural chophouses)

1. (now chiefly historical) An inexpensive restaurant that specializes in chops or steaks; a steakhouse.
   • 1763, James Boswell, edited by Gordon Turnbull, London Journal 1762-1763, Penguin, published 2014, page 231:

     Temple & his Brother & I dined in their chambers where we had dinner brought thinking it a more genteel & agreable way than in a Chophouse.

   • 1982, William Least Heat-Moon [pseudonym; William Trogdon], Blue Highways, →ISBN, page 16:

     But franchisers don't sell many of their thirty-three billion hamburgers per year in blue highway towns where chophouses must draw customers through continuing quality rather than national advertising.

2. (Nigeria) Any restaurant.
3. A custom house in China where transit duties are levied.
   • 1883, Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &c., of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants:

     the South Chop-house on the southern shore of the river bears S.S.W.