public assistance

1. 1.

   governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need

   “she lives on welfare”

   Synonymssocial welfarewelfare

   Broaderaid

   Narrowersocial insurancereliefdole

Questions about public assistance

What does public assistance mean?

public assistance means "governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need".

What is another word for public assistance?

Close synonyms include social welfare, welfare. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is public assistance a common word?

public assistance is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.