Pl. asylums (also in senses 1, 2, asyla). Forms: 5–7 asilum, 7 assylum, 8 azylum, 7– asylum. [a. L. asȳlum, a. Gr. ἄσῡλον refuge, sanctuary, neut. of adj. ἄσῡλος inviolable, f. ἀ priv. + σύλη, σύλον right of seizure. Cf. ASYLE.]
1. A sanctuary or inviolable place of refuge and protection for criminals and debtors, from which they cannot be forcibly removed without sacrilege.
c. 1430. Lydg., Bochas, II. xxviii. 65 a. A territory that called was Asile. This Asilum … Was a place of refuge and succours … For to receyue all foreyn trespassours.
1600. Holland, Livy, I. viii. 7. Romulus … set up a sanctuarie or lawlesse church, called Asylum.
1673. Cave, Prim. Chr., I. vi. 145. How far those Asyla’s and Sanctuaries were good and useful.
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., We read of asylums at Lyons and Vienne among the ancient Gauls.
1807. Robinson, Archæol. Græca, III. ii. 197. Some were asyla for all men, and others were appropriated to particular persons and crimes.
2. gen. A secure place of refuge, shelter or retreat.
1642. Sir E. Dering, Sp. on Relig., xvi. 87. They have bin the Asylum for superstition.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 729. He fled to Oxon, the common Asylum of afflicted royalists.
1728. Morgan, Algiers, II. v. 318. A Port, where his Ships might find an Azylum.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr., II. III. vi. 76. The monasteries were not as yet the asyla of letters.
3. abstr. Inviolable shelter; refuge, protection.
1725. trans. Dupin’s Eccl. Hist. 17th C., I. II. iii. 40. The Senate was oblig’d to confine the Right of Asylum to Nine Temples.
1814. Byron, Lara, II. viii. Beneath his roof They found asylum oft but ne’er reproof.
4. A benevolent institution affording shelter and support to some class of the afflicted, the unfortunate or destitute; e.g., a ‘lunatic asylum,’ to which the term is sometimes popularly restricted.
1776. Pennant, Tour Scot., II. 307. When the grievous distemper of the leprosy raged … our ancestors erected asyla for those poor wretches.
1866. G. Macdonald, Ann. Q. Neighb., vii. (1878), 115. Miss Oldcastle thought she was out of her mind, and spoke of an asylum.
1879. Harlan, Eyesight, v. 56. Three hundred of these persons (victims of Egyptian Ophthalmia) were cared for in an asylum … in Paris.
