MEANING
1. A place offering refuge or protection from danger, persecution, or exposure.
2. A hospital or institution for people with mental illness, especially in historical usage.
Use it for
Name a shelter, sanctuary, or historically described institution.Use a refuge or institutional setting while keeping modern mental-health language respectful.
Words that belong together
- seek asylum
- grant asylum
- political asylum
- historic asylum
- abandoned asylum
- asylum building
On the page
He sought asylum in the consulate after the coup.
The abandoned asylum stood beyond the viaduct, its windows filmed with dust.
Nearby words
Opposite meanings
Word forms
- Base
- asylum
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Usage notes
The refuge sense is current; the institutional sense is historically associated with psychiatric hospitals and may carry outdated connotations. Sense 2: For present-day real institutions, prefer psychiatric hospital or mental-health facility; asylum may sound historical or stigmatizing.
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