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dress the house. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Verb
dress the house (third-person singular simple present dresses the house, present participle dressing the house, simple past and past participle dressed the house)
- (theater) To position oneself, or others, so as to make the auditorium appear fuller than it really is.
1917, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), page cccxlvi:[…] to pay this tax through inviting a certain class of the public, who are always invited, to theatres of standing to dress the house.
1931, Bernard Shaw, Our Theatre in the Nineties, volume 24, page 246:[…] we critics were not his fellow-guests, but simply deadheads whose business it was to "dress the house" and write puffs.
1979, Lawrence Stern, School and Community Theater Management: A Handbook for Survival:The box office in a reserved seat house and the ushers in a non-reserved situation are responsible for dressing the house—that is, seating the audience so as to elicit the maximum response, […]