refuge

Pluralrefuges

Formsrefuges, refuging, refuged

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A place that provides safety, protection, or shelter from danger or trouble.

   The mountain hut served as a refuge for climbers caught in bad weather.

   Thousands fled to refuges set up along the border that winter.

   Similarshelter, sanctuary, haven, retreat, asylum

   Note

   The concrete side of the word covers a hut, a shelter or a border camp, and it can be counted, with the plural refuges. A refuge can be humble or even shaky. The American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897) has its narrator driven to "the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn." Afford and offer are its natural verbs: the place gives refuge, while a person takes it or seeks it.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The condition of being safe, protected, or sheltered from danger or distress.

   He sought refuge from his worries in long walks beside the sea.

   The quiet library offered a welcome refuge from the demands of the day.

   Similarshelter, sanctuary, safety, protection, escape

   Oppositedanger, exposure

   Note

   Behind the word is Latin refugium, from re- and fugiō, "flee": safety here is where flight comes to rest. As a condition rather than a spot, it pairs naturally with seek and find, often followed by from or in, as in "sought refuge from his worries." Milton, in Paradise Lost (1667), sets it beside place in "find place or refuge," keeping the condition and the sheltering place side by side.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A person or thing one turns to for safety or assistance; a recourse or resort.

   Faith was his only refuge in the difficult months after the loss.

   When negotiations broke down, the courts became their last refuge.

   Similarrecourse, resort, comfort, support, solace

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A means or device resorted to in order to secure protection or defense.

   Silence was her refuge against questions she could not answer.

   He took vague excuses as his refuge to avoid making any decision.

   Similardefense, shield, resort, expedient

   Note

   Here the shelter is a move rather than a place or a person: a stratagem someone falls back on. In Shakespeare's Coriolanus, "Their latest refuge / Was to send him" means their last resort was to send him. Henry Wotton calls grammar-school teaching the "ordinary Refuge" of desperate people with no better employment. The recourse sense names whom or what you turn to. This sense names what you do.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A raised or marked area in the middle of a road where pedestrians can wait safely partway across.

   Pedestrians can pause on the central refuge before crossing the second lane.

   Planners added a refuge to help children cross the wide road safely.

   Similarisland, median

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   To return to a place that offers shelter.

   Small fish leave the reeds to feed at dawn and refuge there again whenever herons appear.

   Refuging at the same cliff ledges night after night makes the colony easy to count.

   Similarshelter, roost, retreat

   Note

   A verb that turns up in descriptions of animal behavior, where it means heading back to cover such as a ledge, a roost or a reed bed. It is intransitive, so nothing follows it directly: animals refuge at or in a place. The -ing form does much of the work, as in Monkeys on the Edge (2011), where among macaques "refuging is a common characteristic." The past form is refuged.

Showing meanings only. Show all 7