different between hothouse vs hotbed

English

Etymology

From Middle English hothous, equivalent to hot +? house.

Alternative forms

• hot-house

Noun

hothouse (plural hothouses)

1. A heated greenhouse.
2. (figuratively) An environment in which growth or development is encouraged naturally or artificially; a hotbed.
   • 1989, H. T. Willetts (translator), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ?ISBN, page 163:

     This had given him the strength to leave cadet school at seventeen and volunteer for active service, reach the rank of second lieutenant no later than his hothouse-bred contemporaries, begin his military studies in the General Staff Academy itself, and, still only twenty-five, graduate not only with top marks but with promotion out of turn for special excellence in military science.

   • 1989, H. T. Willetts (translator), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ?ISBN, page 182:

     In 1906 and 1907 defeat was not yet total, society was still on the boil, spinning around the rim of the maelstrom. Lenin had sat in Kuokkala, waiting in vain for the second wave. But from 1908, when the reactionary rabble had tightened its grip on the whole of Russia, the underground had shriveled to nothing, the workers had swarmed like ants out of their holes and into legal bodies—trade unions and insurance associations—and the decline of the underground had sapped the vitality of the emigration too, reduced it to a hothouse existence. Back there was the Duma, a legal press—and every émigré was eager to publish there.

3. (obsolete) A bagnio, or bathing house; a brothel.
   • 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure, for Measure, II. i. 64:

     and now she professes a / hot-house, which I think is a very ill house too.

   • 1599, Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour

     Let a Man sweat once a week in a Hot-house, and be well rubb'd, and froted, with a good plump juicy Wench

4. A heated room for drying greenware.
5. (climatology) A hot state in global climate.

   Synonym: greenhouse

   Antonym: icehouse

Derived terms

• hothouse effect
• hothouse flower

Translations

Verb

hothouse (third-person singular simple present hothouses, present participle hothousing, simple past and past participle hothoused)

1. (of a child) To provide with an enriched environment with the aim of stimulating academic development.

See also

• forcing house

English

Etymology

hot +? bed

Noun

hotbed (plural hotbeds)

1. A low bed of earth covered with glass, and heated with rotting manure, used for the germination of seeds and the growth of tender plants, like a miniature hothouse.
2. (by extension) An environment that is ideal for the growth or development of something, especially of something undesirable.

   Synonym: seedbed

3. An iron platform in a rolling mill, on which hot bars, rails, etc., are laid to cool.

Translations

See also

• breeding-ground
• nidus