1. Protection or shelter, as from danger or hardship: sought refuge from the storm in a cabin.

a. A place providing protection or shelter: a colony that was a refuge for religious nonconformists.

b. An undeveloped area for the preservation of animals and plants.

3. A source of help, relief, or comfort in times of trouble: "Reva's love was her refuge from shame and degradation" (Richard Wright). See Synonyms at shelter .

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin refugium. from refugere. to run away. re-. re- + fugere. to flee .]

1. shelter or protection, as from the weather or danger

2. any place, person, action, or thing that offers or appears to offer protection, help, or relief: accused of incompetence, he took refuge in lying.

3. (Human Geography) another name for traffic island

archaic to take refuge or give refuge to

[C14: via Old French from Latin refugium. from refugere to flee away, from re- + fugere to escape]

ref•uge

1. shelter or protection from danger, trouble, etc.

2. a place of shelter or protection.

3. anything to which one has recourse for aid or escape.

4.Archaic. to afford refuge to.

5.Archaic. to take refuge.

[1350–1400; < Middle French < Latin refugium <refug(ere) to turn and flee, run away]

• asylum - Comes from Greek asulon, "refuge," from asulos, "inviolable."
• bast - A word for an asylum, refuge, or sanctuary.
• harbor - First meant "shelter" and "lodging," and that is how the word first entered English place-names, as a "place of shelter; refuge" for a crowd of people. A port is a haven for vessels and it is equipped for loading and unloading ships, while a harbor is a haven for vessels but does not necessarily have onshore facilities.
• redoubt - Has no connection to "doubt," but comes from French redoute and Latin reductus, "hidden place, refuge, stronghold."

Past participle: refuged
Gerund: refuging

This was Jo's favorite refuge. and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived near by and didn't mind her a particle.

Her day had been quite filled up, and it was for a rest, for a refuge. and to talk about Robert, that she sought out her friend.

Duncan listened with intense anxiety for the strokes of the paddle, believing that flight was now their only refuge .

Jessie Carr's half-frightened smile took refuge in the trembling shadows of her dark lashes; Christie Carr stiffened slightly, and looked straight before her.

It was the Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled.

She fled for refuge. as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her.

I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge .

The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.

But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a dead whale -- even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them.

This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis--in the "Levee" district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same, for he was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place of refuge .

Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable.

In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.