booby house

noun

"booby-house" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“booby house” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
11
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - booby-hatch; lunatic asylum

Corpus desk

Index EN-booby-house · booby house · English

booby house · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-6 6 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "B" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for booby house
PropertyValue
Headwordbooby house
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “booby house” in English

booby houseranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

booby house is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "booby-hatch; lunatic asylum".

booby house doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is booby house, spelled B-O-O-B-Y- -H-O-U-S-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    booby-hatch; lunatic asylum

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how booby house appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. As for taking the kinks out of weak backs, straightening them out and tightening them up around the waist, that's old stuff in all the booby houses where the keepers clap the patients in strait jackets.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "booby house"?
"booby house" is spelled B-O-O-B-Y- -H-O-U-S-E.
What does "booby house" mean?
As a noun, "booby house" means: booby-hatch; lunatic asylum
What language does "booby house" come from?
"booby house" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list