Bring the House Down - Theatre Etymology - Part 12

Bring the house down sounds like it means to literally find a house on top of a hill or a mountain and bring it down to the base. It also sounds like it could mean that a house collapses in on itself. However, when people in the theatre use the phrase bring the house down or any of its variations (bring down the house, brought the house down, brought down the house, etc.), it means that a performer or the performers (and crew) did so well that the a loud response (usually applause or laughter) came from the audience.

The reason that this phrase is used is that the word house described the part of a room or theatre where an audience sat. Back in the 18th century, the response from an audience could be so loud that it seemed like the audience was in an earthquake and that the structure in which the performance was held was literally about to fall in on itself.

The origin of the word bring seems to be from sometime before 950 and could possibly come from Middle English (bringen), Old English (bringan), Dutch (brengen), German (bringen), or Gothic (briggan). The origin of house comes from before 900 and could be from Middle English (h[o]us), Old English (hūs), Low German (huus), Old Norse (hūs), German (Haus), or Gothic (-hūs or in gudhūs temple). The origin of the word down comes from before 1100 and seems to have come from either the Middle English word doune or th Old English word dūne which seems to have come from adūne. Basically, it lost the first syllable which makes the word dūne aphetic (meaning a word that has lost a syllable from the original). Adūne originally meant something like "off the hill" or "down from the hill."

While loud applause or laughter (or even stomping) in appreciation of a performance sounds like it is a plausible reason for a theatre collapse, there do not seem to be any instances of a theatre collapsing for this reason. All cases of theatres collapsing or parts of theatres collapsing, whether while an audience was present or not, seem to be due to incorrect, weak, or weakened structure. A few examples are the 1910 collapse of an open-air (airdome) theatre in New Jersey, the 2008 collapse of Nicosia municipal theatre in Cyprus, and the 2013 collapse of the Apollo theatre in London, United Kingdom.

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