Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A hospital treating contagious diseases.
- n. A building or ship used as a quarantine station.
- n. Nautical A storage space between the decks of a ship.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A hospital or pest-house for the reception of diseased persons, particularly of those affected with contagious diseases; also, a prison hospital. At seaports the name is often given to a vessel used for this purpose.
- n. A building or vessel where ships' crews, passengers, and goods are detained during quarantine.
- n. In some large merchant ships, a place near the stern where provisions and stores for the voyage are kept.
Wiktionary
- n. A medical facility specializing in the care for contagious patients.
- n. A ship or building used for quarantine.
- n. nautical An area on some merchant ships where provisions are stored.
WordNet 3.0
- n. hospital for persons with infectious diseases (especially leprosy)
- n. a small locker at the stern of a boat or between decks of a ship
Etymologies
- From Italian lazzaretto. (Wiktionary)
- Italian lazzaretto : blend of lazzaro, lazar (from Late Latin Lazarus, Lazarus; see lazar) and dialectal Nazareto, popular name for a hospital maintained in Venice by the Church of Santa Maria di Nazaret. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“There is a very large lazaretto, which is said to be one of the best managed in the world.”
“* A lazaretto was usually a pest-house for smallpox and other contagious diseases, but here is used for quarantine. but Neilson happily was the very officer, from whom we should have had our certificate, so having the seal of office in his trunk, *”
“The lazaretto is a wretched building, with a flagstaff and two houses projecting on the two sides.”
“Chris, who could now lash the wheel, covered the tired man with blankets from below, and went fishing in the lazaretto for something to eat.”
“The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto entrance on the street.”
“I have now come far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; and I tell you that, to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy, all the reforms of the lazaretto, and even those which he most vigorously opposed, are properly the work of Damien.”
“When I visited the lazaretto, Damien was already in his resting grave.”
“Such an occurrence as a death in a lazaretto, mere selfishness renders striking.”
“Egypt, with a mother to bewail his loss, another we buried in the dismal lazaretto cemetery.”
“A doctor felt his pulse by deputy — a clergyman comes from the town to read the last service over him — and the friends, who attend his funeral, are marshalled by lazaretto-guardians, so as not to touch each other.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lazaretto’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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250 Extra Spelling Words
Some more words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
cultellarius, barouche, palanquin, badelaire, cavetto, tregetour, tergiversate, rhododendron, rhadamanthine, thyrsus, cappelletti, bradycardia and 238 more...
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Storage Facilities
bankshall, storehouse, granary, cornhouse, garner, grange, bodega, repository, sceuophylacium, skeuophylakion, bookhouse, reliquary and 100 more...
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phrontistery - l
from phrontistery.info
lacis, laches, labret, labile, lability, labarum, labefactation, labeorphily, lux, luff, lour, limn and 496 more...
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SeanCroft's list
oleaginous, antelucan, anemones, duennes, pluterperfect, peritoneal, peritoneum, abattoir, accouchement, morganatic, teratalogy, dysmorphology and 21 more...
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Worse Than They Sound
fistula, cryptosporidium, debride, donnybrook, decerebrate, pillory, flagellate, disembogue, minatory, micturate, coprolite, nosocomial and 160 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Words that were new to me
but now they're not because I looked them up. In cases of polysemy or homography, *of course* it was the oddest meaning that stumped me. ;)
Procrustean bed, idem sonans, hob, backcap, quango, cheap-jack, pantechnicon, churrigueresco, chopfallen, maritorious, supererogation, catimini and 212 more...
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My Treasures
Well everyone's lists are favourites or pets or useful terms, no? These are mine.
mephitic, cagastric, wulm, scaevity, seplasiary, sevidical, sevous, soleated, soloecal, sputcheon, stagma, temerate and 173 more...
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Whaleworthy & Piratical Words
A list of favorite nautical words to be sprinkled liberally throughout speech for piratical or Melvillian effect.
batten down, back and fill, beamy, baulking, beckets, bilge, bold shore, boomjumper, breaker, larboard, abaft, ash breeze and 156 more...
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Fall Words 2009
sgraffito, maestá, tempera, size, gesso, obsolescence, hinterland, taboret, pram, amygdalate, pandect, loggia and 105 more...
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Word Gems
foist, coercion, abecedism, abiectic, abigeus, abiogenesis, ablaut, thunderstruck, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, filagree, blotto and 196 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3250 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for lazaretto.

chained_bear "In 1707, the legislature of South Carolina passed a law that called for the construction of a brick building on the Cove. The structure had dimensions of sixteen by thirty feet and was known as the lazaretto, or alternatively, the 'pest house.' The term 'lazaretto' comes from Italian and means leper's house or plague hospital, a place where the diseased poor, especially foreigners, could be forced to stay. 'Pest house' arose in the spare imagination of the English colonists. The pest house was to provide a quarantine place where pestilence from the sea—diseases found among ship passengers—might be allowed to run its course."
—Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (NY: Ballantine Books, 1998), 89 Sep 26, 2009
chained_bear "...as they glided down the long, long inlet... On, past the lazaretto, past the hospital island..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 69 Mar 20, 2008