charity school


nounU.S. History.
  1. an elementary school, usually funded by charitable persons or organizations, for those unable to pay: a forerunner of the public-school system.

Origin of charity school

1
First recorded in 1675–85

Words Nearby charity school

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use charity school in a sentence

  • If her teaching was no better than her looks, Miss Lucy might as well go to the parish charity school!

    East Lynne | Mrs. Henry Wood
  • In Cross Street there is an old charity school, with stuccoed figures of a charity boy and girl on the frontage.

    Holborn and Bloomsbury | Sir Walter Besant
  • We had a great many fights with the street boys and the boys of a neighbouring charity school.

    Reveries over Childhood and Youth | William Butler Yeats
  • Eleanor is no more fitted to be trusted with such an amount of money in her own hands than is a charity-school girl.

    Barchester Towers | Anthony Trollope
  • Elsewhere he found in the choir gallery an ‘exhausted charity school’ of four boys and two girls.

    Charles Dickens and Music | James T. Lightwood