In a small book project which I am working on, I was researching the cholera pandemics in the 1800s, when I ran across an unfamiliar word: lazarat.
Although I have access to several physical and online dictionaries, my go-to dictionary is usually The Online Oxford English Dictionary—not because it’s the most efficient (it’s not!)—but because its references to word usage give me a broader sense of what rare and odd little words like this mean.
“The lazarets where the sick..so often find their welcome passport to the grave.”
1888 Daily News 29 Nov. 4/8