hospice

UK/ˈhɒspɪs/US/ˈhɑspɪs/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,680 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: hospices

A hospice is a home caring for people near the end of life. Move into a hospice.

The aim is comfort rather than cure, which is a different kind of medicine rather than an absence of it. Most hospice care in Britain is given at home rather than in a building.

Definitions of hospice

1nounhospiceA home caring for people near the end of life.C1
“The hospice took him for the last eleven days.”

hospice is a place.

Where it comes from

Latin hospitium meant a lodging for travellers, from hospes, a guest or host.

Latin
hospitium — hospitality, an inn
Old French
hospise
French
hospice
English, today
hospice

Borrowed from French hospice, from Old French hospise, from Latin hospitium (“hospitality, an inn”). a doublet of hospitium.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

hospice in the wild

The hospice, built by and named after the Alpine monk Saint Bernard of Menthon, acquired its first dogs between 1660 and 1670.
St. Bernard (dog breed)
In the financial year 2021/22, the charity supported 66,024 people through its nursing services, hospices and support line calls.
Marie Curie (charity)
Florence Wald was an American nurse, former Dean of Yale School of Nursing, and largely credited as "the mother of the American hospice movement".
Florence Wald
Late in life, Wald became interested in the provision of hospice care within prisons.
Florence Wald
The concept of hospice as a place to treat the incurably ill has been evolving since the 11th century.
Hospice care in the United States

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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