warehouse

Pluralwarehouses

Formswarehouses, warehousing, warehoused

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A large building used to store goods in bulk, often where products are kept after manufacture and before they reach retailers.

   Like a waiting room for goods between the factory and the shop, where they sit until their turn.

   The retailer's warehouse held thousands of pallets waiting for distribution.

   Goods arrive at the warehouse from the factory before being shipped to stores.

   Similarstorehouse, depot, store, depository

   Note

   A plain compound, ware plus house: a house for wares, the goods a trader deals in. In logistics the word is exact. It names the stop between manufacturer and retailer, which is neither the factory nor the shop. The building can outlive that job: The Economist in 2013 placed banking's future in converted warehouses in San Francisco, New York and London, storage space turned into offices.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To store goods in a warehouse or similar large building until they are required.

   The firm warehouses surplus components near its assembly plant.

   Distributors warehouse seasonal goods for months before release.

   Similarstore, stockpile, stock

   Note

   The literal verb, and the one the figurative uses bend. A United States Senate Committee on Finance report of 1894 speaks of goods warehoused as a convenience to importers and asks what duty is owed on tobacco that shrinks in storage. It takes the stored thing as its object. Swap the goods for people and you arrive at the verb for confining people.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To confine a person to an institution for an extended period.

   Critics argued the asylum did little more than warehouse patients for decades.

   The system warehouses inmates without offering any path to rehabilitation.

   Similarconfine, institutionalize, detain

   Note

   Here people are handled like stock, and the word is nearly always an accusation. It says an institution merely holds those in its care rather than teaching or reforming them. The gerund carries the same charge: Ta-Nehisi Coates, in Between the World and Me (2015), sets school against "death and penal warehousing." Chris Daw, writing in 2020, uses it of children held for years in the justice system.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To acquire something and then shelve it, simply to keep competitors from acquiring it.

   The corporation moved to warehouse the competing technology before a startup could license it.

   Pharmaceutical giants have been accused of warehousing promising drug patents.

   Similarshelve, bury, mothball

   Note

   A business word for buying in order not to use. A patent, a technology, a product line or a catalog of syndicated TV shows is acquired and left idle so that no rival can have it. It differs from storing goods in intent: stored goods are waiting to be sold, while warehoused rights are meant to stay put. The practice itself is usually named with the gerund, as in "the warehousing of" something.

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