on the house
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
provided free of charge
Literally: on the house
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
She's going to model for us so she gets grub on the house.
The banquet went on all night and ‘ by six in the morning Braque and Derain were dancing with the bones of the lamb’.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “on the house” mean?
provided free of charge Literally: on the house
Is “on the house” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.