asylum
Pluralasylums (some meanings), asyla (some meanings)
- 1The physical and legal protection given by a place of safety, especially to political refugees.
The journalist sought asylum in a neighboring country after publishing the leaked documents.
Their application for asylum was approved after months of review.
Similarrefuge, sanctuary, protection
Note
Here the word stops naming a place and names what the place gives, and it turns uncountable. People seek asylum, apply for asylum and are granted asylum, never "an asylum." That grammar is the quickest way to tell it from the refuge itself, which can take an article. Because the protection is legal as well as physical, this is the sense that belongs to the language of refugees and the states that shelter them.
- 2A place that provides safety, shelter, or refuge from danger or harm.
The mountain monastery served as an asylum for refugees crossing the border.
Fleeing the riots, they found asylum within the embassy walls.
Similarrefuge, sanctuary, haven, shelter
Note
Borrowed from Latin, which took it from Ancient Greek ásulon, the word works both as a countable noun (an asylum) and as an uncountable one (asylum in general). In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Francesca Carrara (1834), it offers escape from other people's voices and petty cares, not from danger. Two plurals exist: asylums, and the Latinate asyla, which keeps the borrowing's shape visible.
- 3A place of care or confinement for disadvantaged people, especially those with mental illness.
The reformer toured the crowded asylum and condemned the chains still used on patients.
After the breakdown, the family committed him to a private asylum.
Similarinstitution, sanatorium
Note
A word that has aged badly, sounding custodial rather than caring. In Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913), a narrator sets a "crazy asylum" against a genteel sanitarium, and that offhand phrase shows how casually the word was once used. Today psychiatric hospital is the neutral term, so keep asylum for historical writing or for deliberate period color.
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Origin
From Latin asylum, itself from Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).