Dictionary

lazaret en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˌlæzəˈɹɛt/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

Borrowed from French lazaret, from Italian lazzareto (archaic), lazzaretto, lazzeretto; see further at lazaretto. Doublet of lazaretto.

Meanings

1. (historical) Synonym of lazaretto. ▸ A place reserved for people with infectious diseases (especially leprosy or plague) to live on a long-term basis.
   • The director was locked up in the same institution with his patients, and the institution was equally cut off, isolated on the outskirts of the city like an ancient lazaret with its lepers. 1989, Carl Jung et al., translated by Richard Winston et al., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 108:
   • But the civilising was so complete that the survivors of the original inhabitants numbered seven, of whom two were dying of consumption in the Native Compound, three confined in the Native Lazaret with leprosy, the rest, a man and a woman, living in a gunyah at the remote end of Devilfish Bay, subsisting on what food they could get from the bush and the sea and what they could buy with the pennies the man earned by doing odd jobs and the woman by prostitution. 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter II, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 10:
   • I woke the next morning in a lazaret, a long, high-ceilinged room where we, the sick, the injured, lay upon narrow beds. 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXVIII, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 241:
2. (also, figuratively, historical) Synonym of lazaretto. ▸ A building such as a hospital, or occasionally a ship, used to isolate sick people to prevent the spread of infectious diseases; a quarantine.
   • The liver is the lazaret of bile, / But very rarely executes its function 1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto II, (please specify the stanza number):
3. Synonym of lazaretto. ▸ A place at the front of the tweendecks of a merchant ship where provisions are stored.

Forms

Deriveds

lazaret fever