pesthouse

[pest-hous]

noun

plural

pesthouses 

1. a house or hospital for persons infected with pestilential disease.

pesthouse

/ ˈpɛstˌhaʊs /

noun

1. Also called: lazaretto. obsolete,  a hospital for treating persons with infectious diseases

Word History and Origins

Origin of pesthouse¹

First recorded in 1605–15; pest + house

Example Sentences

Behind the pesthouse by lantern light men were digging a hurried grave.

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Now, blessed be God, all our fears are over, for none have died of the infection since the 11th of October, and all the pesthouses have been long empty.

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Hence a universal Pythagorean noviciate would, sooner or later, give rise to epidemics, and Chartreuses of nuns would become pesthouses.

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Jails were pesthouses, in which a disease, akin to our modern typhus, flourished often in epidemic form.

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Among them also, undoubtedly, were many good high-minded men; the Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, met his death in a pesthouse, like that sailor in the flames.

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