The Collaborative International Dictionary
Assignation \As`sig*na"tion\, n. [L. assignatio, fr. assignare: cf. F. assignation.]
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The act of assigning or allotting; apportionment.
This order being taken in the senate, as touching the appointment and assignation of those provinces.
--Holland. -
An appointment of time and place for meeting or interview; -- used chiefly of love interviews, and now commonly in a bad sense.
While nymphs take treats, or assignations give.
--Pope. -
A making over by transfer of title; assignment.
House of assignation, a house in which appointments for sexual intercourse are fulfilled.
Wiktionary
n. (context archaic English) brothel
Wikipedia
House of assignation is an older term, used in nineteenth-century English to refer to what today might be called rooms by the hour, meaning an establishment that is either or both of the below:
- Love hotel
- Brothel
"House of assignation" is a more formal, legal and euphemistic term than the synonymous " house of ill repute".
Usage examples of "house of assignation".
He had been delighted when she had abandoned the brothel for the more lucrative job of being a spiritual medium, and Sally's seances were now famous in Richmond, a town obsessed with supernatural phenomena, but there was no doubt that her success had more than a little to do with the fact that the darkened shrine of Madame Royall, as Sally now called herself, was attached to Richmond's most notorious house of assignation, a proximity that added the spice of wickedness to her clients' visits.