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What is "clearing-house"

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
clearing-house

also clearinghouse, 1832, from clearing + house (n.). The original was established 1775 in London by the bankers for the adjustment of their mutual claims for checks and bills; later the word was extended to similar institutions.

Usage examples of "clearing-house".

To-day it is our system of public book-keeping, a part of our state statistical organization, a clearing-house of obligations and a monetary record of the accumulating surplus of racial energy, which the world-controls apportion to our ever expanding enterprises.

The Milan firm - Pharmacia Colomba SA - acted as a clearing-house and as a convenient centre for breaking down the raw opium into heroin.

TheMilan firm - Pharmacia Colomba SA - acted as a clearing-house and as a convenient centre for breaking down the raw opium into heroin.

I noticed that a number of lots in Pickvance's catalogues had come from the salerooms of Antwerp, which for the past few decades had been the clearing-house from which plunder from the numerous European wars was sold at starvation prices to the greedy princes of Europe.