"Moving House" (and Offices, Apartments, etc.)
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I see that only once in the history of Not One-Off Britishisms have I addressed the expression "to move house," which is the British equivalent of what Americans mean when they say, "to move." It was back in 2011, the first year of the blog, and I recounted, in passing, "the thrill of seeing," in a New Yorker Janet Malcolm piece about Gertrude Stein, published eight years earlier, a sentence that began, ‘She and [Alice B.] Toklas were about to move house from Bilignin to a manor in Culoz, a few miles away…'"
I didn’t mention that the first time I ever encountered the expression also had a New Yorker connection. It was in 1996 or so, and I was interviewing Tina Brown, the magazine’s editor in chief (who is British, as Janet Malcolm is not), and she said something about "moving house." I had not yet devised the concept of NOOBs, but the expression was so striking and different that I filed it away in the recesses of my consciousness.
The OED‘s first two citations for the phrase were both written by Thomas Hardy, the first in an 1888 short story called "Waiting Supper": "Side by side as they had lived in his day here were they now. They had moved house in mass." (Incidentally, the OED defines the word "wait," as Hardy used it in the story’s title, as "To postpone (a meal) in expectation of the arrival of someone. colloquial." It has four citations, all English, from 1788 to 1861. From an 1836 Charles Dickens letter: "I hope and trust you did not wait dinner for me." The only time I’ve ever encountered it, till now, is from my wife, born in Massachusetts, where a lot of Britishisms, like "rubbish," linger.)
But "move house" had been in circulation for at least three decades before Hardy’s story–probably well over three decades. A Google Books search reveals that in 1857, "Moving House" was the title of both an article in The National Magazine and a chapter in Charles Manby Smith’s book The Little World of London.
Google’s Ngram Viewer shows that "move house" dramatically increased in popularity in Britain between about 1940 and 1980, and started creeping up a bit in the U.S. in the 2000s.
It’s still pretty uncommon here, and the only example I found in an (admittedly) cursory search was from a 2025 New York Times article on how to store your clothes: "If you’re moving house, Elizabeth Giardina, 45, the creative director of the fashion label Another Tomorrow, suggests having an exterminator treat the closets before you unpack."
But it seems that in the past couple of years, some variations have appeared on these shores. For example, this ad popped up on Facebook the other day:
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And note this sub-head on a recent Times article:
Screenshot<br>" data-large-file="https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=863" loading="lazy" width="918" height="1024" src="https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=918" alt="" class="wp-image-22821" srcset="https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=918 918w, https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=134 134w, https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=269 269w, https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg?w=768 768w, https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/apartments.jpg 1290w" sizes="(max-width: 918px) 100vw, 918px" />
Finally, the American writer Hua Hsu was quoted in the Times in 2023 as saying, "I was moving offices a few months ago."
I believe that traditionally in America, all three of those quotes would be simply "moving"–possibly followed by "to a new warehouse," "to a new apartment," or "to a new office." Or maybe, in the case of the offices and the apartments, "changing." I welcome the Britishism, in adding specificity or, in the longer form, concision.
But it’s interesting that, as opposed to the singular "move house," all three of those examples use the plural–"warehouses," "apartments." and "office." And so does this 1991 OED quote from the English magazine Which?: "Personal pension plans may be...