pest-housen.
/ˈpɛsthaʊs/, U.S. /ˈpɛstˌ(h)aʊs/ 1. A hospital for people suffering from an infectious disease, esp. bubonic plague; a lazaretto. Also in extended use: any institution where disease is rife. Now historical.
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the world > health and disease > healing > places for the sick or injured > [noun] > hospital or infirmary > leper-house or lazaretto
mesel house?a1400
mesel-cote1402
malantary?a1425
maladerie1461
lazar-cote1470
lazar-house1530
lazaretto1549
lazarus-house1560
leper house1574
pest-house1594
lazaret1611
leprosery1792
leper asylum1818
leprosy1834
leprosarium1869
1594 in Repertories Proc. Court of Aldermen City of London 23 f. 331 To be employed for the paymt of the Carpenter and Bricklayer that buylte the pest howse.
1611 in Vicary's Anat. Bodie of Man (1888) App. iii. 166 Helpinge such persons as come to the Pesthowse.
1665 S. Pepys Diary 22 July (1972) VI. 165 Dr Burnett..showed me the acknowledgment of the maister of the Pest-house that his servant died of a Bubo on his right groine, and two Spots on his right thigh, which is the plague.
1722 D. Defoe Jrnl. Plague Year 45 Some..People being removed to the Pest-House beyond Bunhill-Fields.
1790 W. Bentley Diary I. 211 Odell's funeral from the Pest House was without a single man in the procession but myself.
1801 R. Wilson Diary 11 May in Life (1862) I. iv. 177 They even entered and rifled the pest-houses, or straw huts, where the infested people are abandoned to death.
1830 M. R. Mitford Our Village IV. 246 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.
1931 Good Housek. (U.S. ed.) Dec. 78/1 He preached..to inmates of the ‘pest house’.
1991 Past & Present Aug. 83 All cholera victims were to be transported..to an improvised pest-house set up in the open countryside.
2. figurative.
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1616 T. Overbury et al. Characters in His Wife (9th impr.) sig. R It is an infected pest-house all the yeere long: the plague sores of the law and diseases heere wholely raigning.
1657 J. Trapp Comm. Ezra vi. 11 Those..who turne it into a..pest-house of noysome lusts by their unsavoury speeches.
a1681 R. Allestree Ladies Calling (1720) i. v. 116 The World is but a larger sort of Pest-house.
1782 J. Henderson in W. Davy & J. White tr. Timur Inst. p. li (note) Solitude no more proves sanctity than sanity. Many a spiritual as well as carnal pest-house stands alone.
1833 T. Carlyle Count Cagliostro in Fraser's Mag. July 23/1 A painful search, as through some spiritual pest-house.
1841 C. Dickens Barnaby Rudge lxv. 313 In all the crime..of the great pest-house of the capital, he stood alone.
1898 Argosy July 707 It was not until the red sun came up over the ruined city of Khartoum that the prince realized in what sort of a pest house he was held captive.
1950 T. Bailey Amer. Faces Russia xii. 143 Their incendiary tactics could not be disassociated from those spawned in the ideological pesthouse of Russia.
1990 Village Voice (N.Y.) 30 Jan. 34/1 The kids from the Koch pest-houses;..the kids shot out of the foster care system.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2005; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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