Etymology From Latin asylum, from Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).
1
A place of safety or refuge.
All the busy concerns of daily existence were utterly abhorrent to me. I loathed the sound of others' voices—I hated to be mixed up with their petty routine of ordinary cares; here was an asylum offered to me—here I might lay down all the offices of humanity, and dwell beside that grave whose rest was now my only desire.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXVIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 295:
The first resolution she could take, in the present flutter of her spirits, was to make the best of her way to London, where she thought she might find an asylum in the house of a female relation, married to an eminent physician, known by the name of Kawdle.1835, Tobias Smollett, Walter Scott, Select Works of Tobias Smollett With a Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Author, volume 2, page 265:
2
The protection, physical and legal, afforded by such a place (as, for example, for political refugees).
So lawyers started filing separate asylum requests for the children, arguing that reintegrating in countries they barely knew, after spending their childhood or adolescence in Belgium, would not only be impossible but would expose them to serious risks.2020 August 5, Francesca Spinelli, “Meet David: born in France, raised in Belgium, facing removal to the DRC”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 05 Jan 2021:
3
Dated A place of protection or restraint for one or more classes of the disadvantaged, especially the mentally ill.
Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
It was she who in the last few years had spread abroad the notion that Charles Nagle, in the public interest, should be asylumed.1913, Marie Belloc Lowndes, chapter III, in Studies in Love & in Terror, page 144: