Word.ws English Dictionary

public assistance

public assistance noun: payment made to disadvantaged persons by government in order to alleviate the burdens of poverty, unemployment, disability, old age, etc.

Noun

public assistance (uncountable)

  1. (public policy) Payment made to disadvantaged persons by government in order to alleviate the burdens of poverty, unemployment, disability, old age, etc.
    • Suddenly thrown on the world, with a wife and four children, with but the wages of a week for his and their support, they had travelled thus far on the way to a neighboring parish, where he said he had a right to, and must seek, public assistance.1820, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 15, in Precaution
    • Bush has made public assistance—specifically welfare—a constant target of his campaign rhetoric.1992 May 25, Thomas Sancton et al., “How to Get America Off the Dole”, in Time
  2. Government subsidy.
    • The Tobacco Fund is financed by a deduction from the premiums granted to tobacco producers and it is therefore justified to propose that all public assistance for measures financed under the Fund be provided from the Community own resources in the Fund....

Questions about public assistance

What does public assistance mean?
Public assistance means payment made to disadvantaged persons by government in order to alleviate the burdens of poverty, unemployment, disability, old age, etc.
What part of speech is public assistance?
Public assistance is a noun.

Words near public assistance in the dictionary

  1. public access television
  2. public address system
  3. public address systems
  4. public administration
  5. public art
  6. public assistance
  7. public authorities
  8. public authority
  9. public bodies
  10. public body
  11. public bookcase

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: public assistance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “public assistance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/public_assistance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.