asylum

From Latin asylum, from Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).

• IPA^(key): /əˈsaɪləm/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪləm

asylum (countable and uncountable, plural asylums or asyla)

1. A place of safety or refuge.
   • 1834, L E L, chapter XXVIII, in Francesca Carrara.  In Three Volumes.">…], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, , (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 295:

     All the busy concerns of daily existence were utterly abhorrent to me. I loathed the sound of others' voices—I hated to be mixed up with their petty routine of ordinary cares; here was an asylum offered to me—here I might lay down all the offices of humanity, and dwell beside that grave whose rest was now my only desire.

2. (uncountable) The protection, physical and legal, afforded by such a place (as, for example, for political refugees).
3. (dated) A place of protection or restraint for one or more classes of the disadvantaged, especially the mentally ill.
   • 1913, Joseph C Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

• sanctuary
• shelter

• non-refoulement
• refugee

From Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key):
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key):

asȳlum n (genitive asȳlī); second declension

1. asylum (place of refuge), sanctuary

   Synonyms: perfugium, latebra, receptāculum, tēctum, refugium, dēverticulum

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• “asylum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “asylum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• asylum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “asylum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “asylum”, in Samuel Ball Platner (1929) Thomas Ashby, editor, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London: Oxford University Press
• “asylum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin