poorhouse
Americannoun
-
poorhouses
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of poorhouse
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Their names were lost, and not much about their lives was known beyond the barest facts: an old age spent in the poorhouse, a problem with cavities.
From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2024
When Marla Carter visits her mother-in-law at a nursing home in Owensboro, Kentucky, the scene feels more 19th-century poorhouse than modern-day America.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 15, 2023
Elon Musk is not heading to the poorhouse if this thing doesn’t work out.
From Slate ● Apr. 25, 2022
In the mid-1800s, the city of Georgetown kept its poorhouse and workhouse in the community, where Guy Mason Recreation Center is now located, near Calvert and 36th streets NW.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 11, 2021
It doesn’t care that he’s too earnest or that he doesn’t know what he wants or that he’s harboring dreams of being a poet, a profession that leads to heartbreak and the poorhouse.
From "The Sun Is Also a Star" by Nicola Yoon
The first approach argues for “indoor relief,” placing individuals primarily in institutions like poorhouses, or today’s public shelters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Older adults were generally considered a “burden on the local taxes,” and many were either sent to poorhouses or auctioned off as farm labor.
From Salon ● Apr. 7, 2025
I recently read Dorothea Dix’s 1843 report on her investigation into the care of mentally ill people in poorhouses and prisons in Massachusetts.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 23, 2022
Black parents searched on their own, scouring orphanages, prisons, poorhouses.
From New York Times ● Oct. 27, 2020
Miss Schuyler was the organizing genius of the Bellevue Visiting Committee, which from visiting the poorhouses of Westchester County, progressed to the establishment of the first training school for nurses in this country.
From Anti-Suffrage Essays by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
