ask alms

A bat-eared young man with the mournful features of a card player who has aces wired, Murray could not ask alms as a disabled vet, since he had not been in service.

From Time Magazine Archive

If any go to ask alms, it must be by appointment of the superiors.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 30 of 55 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century, Volume XXX, 1640 by Antonio Alvarez de Abreu

Even at these tombs I found women, to whom permission was granted to spread their handkerchiefs, and ask alms of every visitor.

From Travels in Arabia; comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred by John Lewis Burckhardt

To ask alms would be scarcely more humiliating.

From Baron Trigault's Vengeance by Émile Gaboriau

One who makes it his business to ask alms.

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster