Springhouse

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Dr. Goodword
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Springhouse

Postby Dr. Goodword » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:38 pm

• springhouse •

Pronunciation: spring-hæws • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A small storehouse built over a stream (spring) or well to keep meats and dairy products fresh.

Notes: Spring has so many meanings, it makes this word difficult to interpret. It could mean "a place where boing-boing springs are kept", or "a house where people live only in the spring", in addition to the meaning we will pursue here.

In Play: I can recall a time when people called a refrigerator an "ice box", because in the generation of the ice delivery man (The Iceman Cometh), ice was the coolant of urban refrigerators. On the farm, however, springhouses were often used as refrigerators: "Where's pa, ma?" "Last time I saw him, he was down by the springhouse." Farmers kept everything perishable in the springhouse, not just dairy products: "Why don't you take these eggs out to the springhouse, Festus?"

Word History: Today's Good Word, of course, is a compound comprising spring + house. All three senses of spring sprang from a single source: the verb to spring (forth). The sense of "stream" started out referring only to the source of the stream, where it sprang up out of the ground. The sense of "season of the year" came from the association of the time when plants sprang up and started blooming. The word for "house" is similar in all Germanic languages: German Haus, Dutch huis, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish hus. We don't know where this word came from, but we do know where it went. It was borrowed by several Slavic languages as their word for "hut": Russian khizhina, Czech chýshe, Slovenian hisha, and Bulgarian khizha.
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LukeJavan8
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Re: Springhouse

Postby LukeJavan8 » Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:27 am

I remember the first house I lived in, duplex really, and
the kitchen was so small the 'icebox' was in the dining room.
I remember it so distinctly that I saw a copy at a flea market
and was so struck by deja vu that I literally jumped
and stared. I remember the days when the ice man
came, and still have a holder for carrying the block of
ice. A sort of 'pinchers'.
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

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bamaboy56
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Re: Springhouse

Postby bamaboy56 » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:20 pm

My father-in-law was an iceman back in the day. He was a retired man when my wife and I married but my wife remembers when he would make his rounds delivering ice to people on his route for their iceboxes. Interesting.
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Perry Lassiter
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Re: Springhouse

Postby Perry Lassiter » Wed Apr 30, 2014 2:39 pm

I remember the ice man coming to my grandmother's house when I was a kid. There was one in a apt a friend anc I rented in college. I used it for a bookshelf.

My wife's folks had a "smokehouse" behind their rural home in KY. I understand it served some of the same purposes as a springhouse. She still remembers annual hog-killings.
pl

LukeJavan8
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Re: Springhouse

Postby LukeJavan8 » Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:37 pm

Lots of interesting ones here, I found ours:


https://www.google.com/search?q=icebox& ... 0&dpr=1.25
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

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Slava
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Re: Springhouse

Postby Slava » Wed Apr 30, 2014 6:45 pm

I must say, Luke, those wooden ones are sure fine looking pieces of furniture.

BTW, Perry, wouldn't a smoke house be for a different kind of preserving, i.e. curing with smoke, rather than storage of fresh foods? That's how I've always understood the term, at least.
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