insanitation

[ in-san-i-tey-shuhn ]

noun

1. lack of sanitation or sanitary regulation; unclean or unhealthy condition.

Word History and Origins

Origin of insanitation¹

First recorded in 1880–85; in- ³ + sanitation

Example Sentences

The exact causes of the complications are not always obvious, but in many instances can be traced to the previous bad health of the patient, to the influence of insanitation, or, finally, to certain ill-understood features attendant upon some epidemics.

From Project Gutenberg

Streets knee-deep in mire, mud-floored houses, through which pigs wander at will, shiftlessness, dirt, insanitation are the register of the wet season in interior Panama.

From Project Gutenberg

London is up against appalling conditions of insanitation, lack of adequate toilet facilities and foul air as tens of thousands of people spend night after night sleeping on subway platforms, nodding on escalators which have been stopped until dawn, and huddled or sprawled in warehouses.

From Time Magazine Archive

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but self-defilement is godliness; sainthood, if we are to trust the lives of saints, whether in Asia or in Europe, is coincident with insanitation; saintly virtues are depressed virtues,—humility, hope, meekness, pity; and such conditions of life which define the holy ones are unwholesome—poverty, asceticism, squalor, filth.

From Project Gutenberg

Thus, the hospital at Scutari, never noted for cleanliness, became a hovel of filth and insanitation, to which the alarming death-rate gave ample, if painful, evidence.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• bug
• disease
• epidemic
• flu
• pollution
• virus