crimping house

English

Alternative forms

crimping-house

Noun

crimping house (plural crimping houses)

1. (historical) A low lodging house into which men were decoyed and plied with alcoholic drink to induce them to ship or enlist as sailors or soldiers.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “crimping house”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

See also

• impressment
• press-gang