Alms-house

A house where paupers are supported at the public expense; a poor-house. Also a house set apart for the aged poor free of rent.

“Only, alas! the poor who had neither friends nor attendants,

Crept away to die in the alms-house, home of the homeless.”

Longfellow: Evangeline, part ii. 5, 2.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.