What does “brick house” mean?

A woman with a strong, curvy build, said as praise, as in the Commodores' 1977 hit "Brick House".

Entry · catalog no. 2467

brick house

/ /bɹɪk haʊs/ /BRIK HOWSS

noun · United States; Tuskegee, Alabama group · 1970s

✓ Verified

A compliment for a woman with a full, shapely figure.

“She walked in and everybody said she was a brick house.”

The Commodores' 1977 funk single that made the phrase a household one.

“The Commodores' Brick House still fills the dance floor.”

Origin & Attribution

The comparison "built like a brick house" is older than the song and not credited to one community. The Commodores' "Brick House" (Motown, 1977), written by the band members and recorded by the Tuskegee, Alabama group, a top-five pop and R&B hit, made "brick house" a standard Black American praise-word for a woman's figure. This entry records the Black popular-music sense, not a claimed coinage.

1977

The Commodores release 'Brick House' on Motown

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide

United States; Tuskegee, Alabama group · 1970s

Spoken by

Black American popular music audiences; funk and soul listeners

$BRICKHThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Enduring

49 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

55/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1977

in the culture

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

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Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

The Commodores, 'Brick House' (Motown), 1977

song

■

Wikipedia, 'Commodores (album)'

web

■

Songfacts, 'Brick House'

web

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