funhousen.
/ˈfʌnhaʊs/, U.S. /ˈfənˌ(h)aʊs/ Chiefly North American.
In an amusement park, fairground, etc.: an attraction consisting of a series of rooms equipped with devices (such as distorting mirrors and shifting floors) designed to amuse or scare people as they walk through.
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society > leisure > entertainment > place of amusement or entertainment > fairground or amusement park > [noun] > other side-shows
poppy-show1691
hall of mirrors1789
peep show1851
funhouse1920
freak show1939
Wall of Death1946
1920 Galveston (Texas) Daily News 11 Apr. 22/3 The completion of the scenic railway and the new funhouse..has been delayed.
1965 Kenyon Rev. 27 130 The bed slid toward the window as if they were in a carnival funhouse.
1976 N. Thornburg Cutter & Bone xii. 289 There was also a funhouse and three or four game booths.
2003 Sight & Sound Dec. 36/3 They visit the Museum of Monsters and Madmen, a funhouse operated by the clownish Captain Spaulding.
Compounds
General attributive, frequently in allusive or similative use referring to the effect of the distorting mirrors in a funhouse on a person's reflection; esp. in funhouse mirror.
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1937 Ames (Iowa) Daily Tribune 10 Nov. 5/3 The lass's hat casts a reflection like that of a fun-house mirror or a geometric on a modernistic picture.
1977 R. Coover Public Burning 242 He has not recognized his own image, grown gigantesque..it's like looking into some weird funhouse mirror that stretches one's shape.
1994 Harper's Mag. Nov. 58/2 This..turns democracy into some fun-house contortion of the ideal.
2003 N. Rush Mortals x. 68 Soil subsidence, which, combined with subterranean ant and termite activity, lent a funhouse aspect to walking on the flagstones.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2017; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1920