How to Use the big house in a Sentence

the big house

noun
  • Hulu is heading into — and then out of, presumably — the big house.
    — Rick Porter, HollywoodReporter, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Abdu Murray said his parents came from virtually nothing and worked their whole lives to get the big house and yard.
    — Christina Hall, Freep.com, 9 Dec. 2025
  • There, shooting parties for the royals and their friends provide much of the entertainment after the Christmas presents and lunch at the big house are over.
    — Simon Perry, PEOPLE, 27 Dec. 2025
  • Some plantations celebrate the white slave-owning family and the upper-class furnishings of the big house with no mention of the atrocities that occurred there.
    — Sarah Enelow-Snyder, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 May 2021
  • Avoid whitewashed storytelling that aims to make the experience more palatable, like tours that revolve around the slave-owning family and the luxurious furnishings of the big house.
    — Sarah Enelow-Snyder, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 May 2021
  • Three separate small apartments were created within the big house for the children, Christopher, Elizabeth, and Leslie, then twenty-two, twenty, and sixteen.
    — Joy Williams, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Enslavers’ fortunes and lives depended on being able to control the able-bodied Black men and women who outnumbered them—20, 40, 60 Black bodies crammed into slave shacks, versus maybe a dozen white family members in the big house.
    — Eugene Robinson, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2026
  • De la Cruz, also in his 80s, retired from business and with five adult children dispersed around the country, sold the big house and moved to a Coconut Grove condo with a few favorite pieces and a panoramic view across Biscayne Bay of his former Island Paradise abode.
    — Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 30 Nov. 2025
  • Before the August 2025 move to the big house, aka the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Miami, Thomas owned up to his transgressions.
    — Madeleine Marr, Miami Herald, 27 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the big house.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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