Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a vermin-infested lodging house (latterly hotel).

1846		Swell’s Night Guide 68: Vhy, thunder me groggy! if any trav’ler gets rest there – why it is a reglar bug trap.
1854		J.A. Hazen Five Years before the Mast 29: ‘We can safely say, [...] we have slept in a big-bug bed!’ ‘Yes! replied he laughing, ‘and lodged in a big-bug house, too.’.
1908		Coconino Sun (Flagtaff, AZ) 11 Dec. 3/1: We don’t say bughouse in Boston; it isn’t elegant. We say beetle-garage.
1915		Truth (Brisbane) 25 July 3/3: ‘Gaw-lumme! yer oughter talk after that “thimble-’n’-sling” racket, in Chow’s Alley, when the “demon” dipped yer from- under the bed in Red Mag’s bug house’.
1934		H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1963) 127: ‘This is a bughouse,’ says Van Norden.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1966		G. Fletcher Down Among the Meths Men 60: You could see as well as hear the fattened lice as they moved up the wallpaper in these bug-joints.
1989		(con. 1950s–60s) in G. Tremlett Little Legs 65: I don’t want to stay in this poxy bughouse.

2. a hospital, esp. a lunatic asylum; thus bughouse fable, an exaggerated story; bug ward, bughouse ward, a psychiatric ward; thus bughouser, an asylum inmate, a mad person.

1896		F. Hutcheson Barkeep Stories 17: ‘[D]en I t’ink he’s a mark dat’s broke out o’ some bughouse. He was de wildes’ lookin’ guy ever I see’.
1900		A.H. Lewis ‘Skinny Mike’s Unwisdom’ in Sandburrs 243: I ought to give myself up to d’ p’lice [...] an’ ast ’em to put me in Bloomin’dale or some other bug house.
[1903		Nebraska State Jrnl (Lincoln, NE) 14 June 9/5: [H]e’s about ready for his cunning little private insect pavilion now].
1907		R. Service ‘The Parson’s Son’ in Songs of a Sourdough 13: It put me queer, and for near a year I never drew sober breath, / Till I found myself in the bughouse ward with a claim staked out on death.
1917		Van Loan ‘Playing Even with Obadiah’ in Old Man Curry 59: If Old Man Curry is a fool, there’s an awful lot of wise people locked up in the bug houses.
1918		L.N. Smith Lingo of No Man’s Lnd 18: BUG HOUSE Shell-shock hospital; also used to refer to a dug-out or to flea-pots.
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May (1929) 186: If a prisoner would complain to the visiting magistrates about abuses in the prison, she was doomed to a ride to the bug-house.
1931		Blanche Calloway ‘Concentratin’ on You’ 🎵 Now since your spell is over me, / Boy, I’m bughouse bound!
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 285: ‘Bug House Fable Number 999,’ said Young Rocky.
1934		H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1963) 296: The chateau, they called it. A polite way of saying ‘the bughouse’.
1947		C. Willingham End as a Man (1952) 138: Who cares whether you’re free or locked in a bug-house? You’re crazy.
1953		J. Thompson Alcoholics (1993) 7: Any other guy [...] would be in the bughouse or Alcatraz.
1954		J. Steinbeck Sweet Thursday (1955) 67: If there’s a bughouser within miles he’s drawn to me.
1956		J. Stearn Sisters of the Night 69: She wound up in the bughouse after taking some pills.
1963		H.S. Thompson letter 9 Sept. in Proud Highway (1997) 396: It also rekindled my interest in a subject I’ve been avoiding – namely, that of plunging once again into the Latin bughouse.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 125: I could get sent to the federal bughouse.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 885: You’re not getting me on some bug ward so you can stick some wires in my head.
1983		N. Heard House of Slammers 77: Ol’ Bru goes a little off once in a while [...] He’s done been down to th’ bughouse [...] maybe four times.
2000		Guardian Rev. 15 Jan. 1: A real-life teenager fresh from the bughouse.

3. attrib. use of sense 2.

1896		F.P. Dunne in Schaaf Mr Dooley’s Chicago (1977) 243: ‘So are we,’ says th’ bughouse people.
1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 51: Mutt won a couple of million more in bughouse money yesterday. The odds he gets in the daffy joint are something fierce.

4. (US) the brain.

1901

W. Irwin Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum Introd. n.p.: The better known modern synonym for brain, ‘bug-house’.

5. (US) nonsense, rubbish.

1905		J.W. Carr ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN III:i 72: bug-house, n. Nonsense, bosh. ‘O bug-house, I don’t believe you.’.
1912		A. Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 50: Then it’s plain ‘bughouse,’ no use talking.

6. an eccentric; a psychotic.

1908		S. Ford Side-stepping with Shorty 26: If a Lady Bughouse has strayed in here, we got to shoo her out as quiet as possible.
1911		S. Ford Torchy 267: A flyer! Say, every bughouse in the country is at work on one of them.
2008		G. Pelecanos Way Home (2009) 51: Lawrence Newhouse, who some called Bughouse [...] not considered dangerous unless he was off his meds.

7. (US) a prison.

[1889		J.W. Kaye Lives of Indian Officers II 167: A poor wretch, confined without food for three days and nights in the Bughouse, an infernal hole used for severe imprisonment].
1913		Day Book (Chicago) 10 Nov. 26/2: I don’t want ’em to send me back to that hell-hole at Joliet or to any bughouse.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 414: Prison. [...] bughouse.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 7: Police and pinches, jails, bughouses, and joints seem to have been always a part of my life.
1942		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 11 July 21/1: Bolling [...] who stabbed Marchand [...] of the Apollo theatre a few weeks ago, will face a grand jury. He may be sent to the bug-house as an over-due guest.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

8. (orig. S.Afr.) a run-down, dirty, third-rate cinema.

1963		A. Burgess Inside Mr Enderby in Complete Enderby (2002) 161: Here was the authentic fleapit [...] eptiome of every bughouse that Enderby had, as a child, queued outside.
1973		P. Wilson N.Z. Jack 164: ‘How about coming to the pictures with me tonight.’ [...] ‘All right if I see you outside the bughouse at a quarter to eight?’.
1981		P. Barton Bastards I Have Known 48: The Bughouse was where all the courting was done and the romantic melodramas that came on the big screen were being acted out.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We have No 116: There was a picture house right on Granby Street. We called it the Bughouse, and that was what it was, flea-ridden.
2000		S. Maloney Big Ask 108: He snuck into some bughouse screening a midnight-to-dawn Star Trek marathon.
2108		(con. 1930s) M. McGrath Pie & Mash 71: For ted it’s tickets to the Saturday morning tupenny rush at the Ritz (also known as the bughouse).

9. any place that drives one crazy.

1939		‘Operator 1384’ McCann of the Legion (1941) 8: ‘Say, what brings a son of the bulldog breed to this bughouse?’.
1940		E. O’Neill Iceman Cometh Act I: Be God, this bughouse will drive me stark, raving loony yet!