Asylum and asylums

As reported on the platform formerly known as Twitter (which I’m unable to link to), Asha Rangappa suggsts a “missing link”:

When he hears the word “asylum” in connection with migrants he thinks it means insane asylums, not refuge from persecution. Hence Hannibal Lecter, etc. Omg.

The word asylum comes to us from the classical Latin asȳlum, refuge, sanctuary, which derives in turn from the Hellenistic Greek ἄσῡλον, refuge, sanctuary. The still-familiar meaning (1596): “a secure place of refuge, shelter, or retreat.” The dictionary dates the meaning relevant to refugees to 1842: “Protection and (usually temporary) permission to stay granted by a state to a refugee, esp. a political refugee, from another country.” If Trump is indeed imagining insane asylums, he’s latching onto a later meaning (1775) that the dictionary labels “chiefly historical ”: “a secure institution or establishment for the confinement and treatment of people diagnosed with severe mental illness; a psychiatric hospital. Also: a prison for mentally ill criminals.”

And speaking of secure institutions, I’ll cite Chris Sununu, Republican governor of New Hampshire, speaking about Donald Trump: “I doubt that he’s so crazy that he should be in a mental institution, but if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”

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Here’s the X post. Thanks, Daughter Number Three.

Omg I think this is the missing link. 🎯 When he hears the word “asylum” in connection with migrants he thinks it means insane asylums, not refuge from persecution. Hence Hannibal Lecter, etc. Omg. 🤣😳 https://t.co/C58QDtHZpT

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) July 20, 2024

[Sununu’s words appear in an introductory video for George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC.]