ˈpest-house
[f. pest + house n.]
A hospital for persons suffering from any infectious disease, esp. the plague; a lazaretto. Also attrib.
| 1611 in Vicary's Anat. (1888) App. iii. 166 Helpinge such persons as come to the Pesthowse. 1617 Moryson Itin. i. 73 They have a Pest house called Lazaretto, and two like houses for Lepers. 1665 Pepys Diary (1879) III. 199. 1722 De Foe Plague (1840) 37 Some people being removed to the pest⁓house beyond Bunhill fields. 1830 Miss Mitford Village Ser. iv. (1863) 265 He..shunned ball-rooms and drawing⁓rooms as if they were pest-houses. 1890 Times 20 Jan. 9/2 [The prisons] were pesthouses in which gaol-fever annually claimed a multitude of victims. |
| fig. a 1613 Overbury Charac., Prison Wks. (1856) 155 It is an infected pest-house all the yeare long: the plague⁓sores of the law, are the diseases here wholely reigning. 1833 Carlyle Misc. Ess., Cagliostro (1840) IV. 352 A painful search, as through some spiritual pest-house. 1840 Dickens Barn. Rudge lxv, In all the crime..of the great pest-house of the capital, he stood alone. |