sanitarium
Americannoun
plural
sanitariums, sanitarianoun
Etymology
Origin of sanitarium
1850–55; < Latin sānit ( ās ) health ( sanity ) + -ārium -ary
Explanation
In the past, someone who was recovering from a long-term illness might stay at a sanitarium, a special kind of hospital. Many sanitariums in the U.S. once treated patients with tuberculosis. A sanitarium was also often called a sanatorium. Even more confusingly, both words were sometimes used to mean "health resort," something closer to a spa than a hospital. Before antibiotics were invented, the most effective treatment for tuberculosis and other lung diseases was fresh air and healthy food at a sanitarium. The word is rooted in the Latin sanitas, "health."
Vocabulary lists containing sanitarium
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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.
Their mother is stuck in a nearby sanitarium, suffering from an undisclosed illness.
From New York Times • Jul. 19, 2023
Doctors urged him to enter a sanitarium for treatment, but Slim refused and headed for the desert, although doctors warned him he would be dead in a year.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 8, 2023
Italianate-Mission in style, boxy with projecting cornice and flat roofline, it belonged to the developer, who in 1925 turned his private villa into a sanitarium and orphanage.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 8, 2022
Not long after, Post opened a competing sanitarium in Battle Creek and a cereal company — based on the health foods promoted at the center that changed the course of packaged-food history.
From Seattle Times • Sep. 12, 2022
Hayden was discreetly driven from the park in one of the fair’s innovative English ambulances with quiet rubber tires and placed in a sanitarium for a period of enforced rest.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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.
