Also 7 lazzareto, lazaretta, 8 lazeretto, lazareta, 9 lazzaretto. [ad. It. lazzareto (Florio), now lazzeretto, f. lazzaro LAZAR.]
1. A house for the reception of the diseased poor, esp. lepers; a hospital, pest-house. (Chiefly used with reference to foreign countries.)
1549. Thomas, Hist. Italie, 83 a. For the plague there is a house … two miles from Venice, called the Lazaretto.
1609. W. Biddulph, in T. Lavender, Trav. cert. Englishmen, 6. The Lazaretta [at Zante], which is a place like vnto the pest house in More-fields.
1789. Mrs. Piozzi, Journ. France, I. 77. The Lazaretto … remains a standing monument of his piety.
1822–56. De Quincey, Confess. (1862), 31. Bare as the walls of a poor house or lazaretto.
1874. Green, Short Hist., x. § 1. 722. His longing … led him to examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East.
2. A building, sometimes a ship, set apart for the performance of quarantine.
1605. B. Jonson, Fox, IV. i. (1607), I 2 b. Where they vse To lie out forty, fifty dayes, sometimes, About the Lazaretto, for their triall.
1615. G. Sandys, Trav. (1621), 6. When they haue Pratticke, they are enforced to vnlade at the Lazaretto. Ibid., 227. To be conueyed by him vnto the Lazaretta, there to remaine for thirtie or fortie dayes before I could be admitted into the Citie.
1785. Paley, Mor. Philos. (1818), II. 163. Conveyed to a lazaretto by an order of quarantine.
1853. Felton, Fam. Lett., xxiv. (1865), 210. We could not shake hands; for that would have sent him to the lazaretto for twenty-four hours, as a plague-stricken person.
3. Naut. ‘A place parted off at the fore part of the ’tween decks, in some merchantmen, for stowing provisions and stores in’ (Adm. Smyth, 1867).
1711. in W. Sutherland, Shipbuild. Assist., 161.
1783. Colebrooke, Lett., in Life (1873), 7. The Duke of Athol, Indiaman, took fire by neglect of the steward in drawing off rum in the lazareta.
1799. in Naval Chron., I. 303. The fire must be in the lazaretto below.
c. 1850. Rudim. Navig. (Weale), 129.
