Poor people who receive alms; the recipients or beneficiaries of charitable giving.
Compound of 'alms' and 'folk' (meaning people), a straightforward English formation that directly names the group of people who are the subjects of charitable care.
The word 'folk' originally just meant 'people,' but calling the poor 'almsfolk' made their identity inseparable from their dependence on charity—revealing how society categorized and thought about poverty.
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