asylum
pronunciation
How to pronounce asylum in British English:
UK [əˈsaɪləm]
How to pronounce asylum in American English:
US [əˈsaɪləm]
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- Noun:
- a shelter from danger or hardship
- a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person
Word Origin
- asylum
- asylum: [15] Greek sulon meant ‘right of seizure’. With the addition of the negative prefix a- ‘not’ this was turned into the adjective ásūlos ‘inviolable’, which in turn was nominalized as āsūlon ‘refuge’. When it first entered English, via Latin asylum, it was used specifically for ‘place of sanctuary for hunted criminals and others’ (a meaning reflected in modern English ‘political asylum’), and it was not until the mid 18th century that it came to be applied to mental hospitals.
- asylum (n.)
- early 15c., earlier asile (late 14c.), from Latin asylum "sanctuary," from Greek asylon "refuge," noun use of neuter of asylos "inviolable, safe from violence," especially of persons seeking protection, from a- "without" + syle "right of seizure." So literally "an inviolable place." General sense of "safe or secure place" is from 1640s; meaning "benevolent institution to shelter some class of persons" is from 1776.
Example
- 1. Leah mcgrath goodman is the author of the asylum : the renegades who hijacked the world 's oil market .
- 2. But granting mr apablaza asylum poses its own risks .
- 3. Yet hostile comment concentrates on the asylum element .
- 4. She was committed to an asylum when philip was nine .
- 5. Munch 's sister , who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia , was housed in that asylum .