poorhouse
Americannoun
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.
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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
Because no matter what distance I travel from childhood, I still feel one foot in the poorhouse.
From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2022
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
The hungry little boy in the story had held up his bowl to the poorhouse overseer and said: “Please sir, I want some more.”
From "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson
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
I’m sure the polite Victorians did not want to hear about poorhouses and orphanages and yet they were waiting each month for the next installment.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 14, 2022
The churches were half empty; the temperance reading-rooms were shut up; the Mechanics' Institute no longer got support; only the jails and the poorhouses were crowded.
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17 by Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis)
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.
