Definition

1. Noun:
   • A small model of a house used as a toy by children: A miniature house, often with furniture and sometimes dolls, designed for children's play.
   • A house so small that it is likened to a child's plaything: A very small, often charmingly compact, real house.

Examples of Usage

• As a toy model:
  • She spent hours arranging the tiny furniture in her doll's house.
  • The intricate doll's house was a replica of a Victorian mansion.
• As a description of a real, small house:
  • They retired to a charming doll's house in the countryside.
  • The cottage was a perfect little doll's house, with a tiny garden.

Advanced Usage

• "like a doll's house": Used as a simile to describe something that is exceptionally neat, small, or intricately detailed.
  • Her apartment was decorated so perfectly it was like a doll's house.

Variants and Related Words

• Dollhouse: (noun) The more common spelling in American English for both meanings.
• Miniature house: (noun phrase) A general term for a small-scale model of a building.

Synonyms

• Toy house: (noun phrase) A house used as a toy.
• Miniature: (noun) A much smaller than usual version of something.
• Cottage: (noun) A small house, especially in the country (for the second meaning).

Idioms and Phrases

• "Everything in its place, like a doll's house": An idiom describing extreme neatness and order.
  • After she cleaned, the room was perfect, everything in its place, like a doll's house.

Noun

1. a small model of a house used as a toy by children
2. a house so small that it is likened to a child's plaything