halfway house

English

Etymology

The term in its original sense (the literal one) was clearly already a well-established term when Samuel Pepys mentioned a prominent example in his diary in 1662.

Noun

halfway house (plural halfway houses)

2. A temporary residence for those who have left prison, residential drug rehabilitation, or the like, designed to ease them back into society.
   • 2023 July 11, “Manson follower Leslie Van Houten released from prison after 53 years”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     She added that Van Houten will head to a halfway house for about a year after her release.

4. (figuratively) A halfway point towards achieving a goal.
   • 1791 February 4, Thomas Jefferson, [Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Mason, 4 February 1791]‎^[2], U.S. National Archives:

     I consider the establishment and success of their government [i.e., the French revolutionaries' government] as necessary to stay up our own and to prevent it from falling back to that kind of Halfway-house, the English constitution.

   • 2021 April 21, Philip Haigh, “As one strike ends, trouble starts to flare up elsewhere...”, in RAIL, number 929, page 56:

     The deal represents a halfway house to driver-only operation, as seen elsewhere - for example, on Thameslink, where the driver is the only member of staff who must be aboard the train.

6. (literally) An inn reached about midway through a journey.

   Hypernyms: roadhouse, coaching inn < inn, hotel < house

   • 1662 May 30 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “May 20th, 1662”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume II, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1893, →OCLC, page 224:

     At last parted, and my wife and I by coach to the Opera […] Thence to Tower-wharf, and there took boat, and we all walked to Halfeway House,² and there eat and drank, and were pleasant, and so finally home again in the evening, and so good night, this being a very pleasant life that we now lead, and have long done; the Lord be blessed, and make us thankful. But, though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money, and opportunity, rather than to leave pleasures to old age or poverty, when we cannot have them so properly. [Footnote in 1893] ²The Halfway House, Rotherhithe, was a place of entertainment frequently visited by Pepys on his way to Deptford, towards which it was a halfway house.

8. (figuratively) Any place of calm and respite reached during a journey.
   • 1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 26:

     Even to-day Zakro is still the principal half-way house for sailing craft between the Ægean and the north coast of Africa.

Translations

temporary residence

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 过渡住所

• Czech: dům na půli cesty m
• Finnish: tukikoti, tukiasunto, tukiasuntola
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: дом на полпути́ m (dom na polputí) (usually foreign context), дом на полдоро́ге m (dom na poldoróge) (usually foreign context)
• Swedish: halvvägshus (sv)

See also

• Midway

Further reading

• halfway house on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “halfway house”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.