jail

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *ḱewh₁-der.
Proto-Indo-European *ḱowh₁ós?
Proto-Italic *kawos
Latin cavus
Latin cavea
Proto-Indo-European *-lós
Proto-Indo-European *-elós
Proto-Italic *-elos
Latin -ulus
Latin -ola
Late Latin caveola
Anglo-Norman jaiolebor.
Middle English gayole
English jail

    Inherited from Middle English gayole, borrowed from Anglo-Norman jaiole, from Late Latin caveola, from Latin cavea (“cage”) + -ola (diminutive ending).Category:English terms derived from Anglo-Norman#JAILCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#JAILCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Italic#JAILCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European#JAILCategory:English terms derived from Late Latin#JAILCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#JAILCategory:English terms derived from Latin#JAILCategory:English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱewh₁-#JAILCategory:Pages with etymology trees#JAILCategory:English entries with etymology trees#JAILCategory:English entries with etymology texts#JAILCategory:Pages using etymon with no ID#JAIL Doublet of caveolaCategory:English doublets#JAIL and related to cage. More at cajole.

    Fully displaced native Middle English quartern (“prison, jail, cell”), from Old English cweartern (“jail, prison”).

    Partially displaced native Middle English lok, from Old English loc (“enclosure, pen; jail, prison”), whence lockCategory:English links with manual fragments#JAIL; and Middle English carcern, from Old English carcern, from Latin carcer (“prison, jail”).

    Compare these Old English words, all meaning “jail”: heaþor, heolstorloca (means also “jail cell”), clūstorloc, dung (also “dungeon”), hlinræced, nirwþ, nīedcleofa, hearmloca, and nearu.

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    jail (countable and uncountable, plural jails)Category:English lemmas#JAILCategory:English nouns#JAILCategory:English uncountable nouns#JAILCategory:English countable nouns#JAILCategory:English countable nouns#JAILCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#JAILCategory:Pages with entries#JAILCategory:Pages with 1 entry#JAIL

    1. A place or institution for the confinement of persons held against their will in lawful custody or detention, especially (in US usage) a place where people are held for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
      Synonyms: slammer, hoosegow
      Hypernyms: correctional facility, correctional institution
      Coordinate terms: big house, prison
      She visited her brother in jail.Category:English terms with usage examples#JAIL
    2. (uncountableCategory:English uncountable nouns#JAIL) Confinement in a jail.
      • 2011 December 14, Steven Morris, “Devon woman jailed for 168 days for killing kitten in microwave”, in Guardian‎:
        He said Robins had not been in trouble with the law before and had no previous convictions. Jail would have an adverse effect on her and her three children as she was the main carer.
        Category:English terms with quotations#JAIL
    3. (horse racingCategory:en:Horse racing#JAIL, uncountableCategory:English uncountable nouns#JAIL) The condition created by the requirement that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for some period of time (usually 30 days).
    4. In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
    5. (computingCategory:en:Computing#JAIL, FreeBSD, usually uncountable) A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.

    Usage notes

    This section or entry lacks references or sources. Please help verify this information by adding appropriate citations. You can also discuss it at the Tea Room.
    Particularly: “evidence that the board game Monopoly played a role in the trend towards “jail” spelling”
    Category:Requests for references for English terms#JAIL
    • (place of confinement): Like many nouns denoting places where people spend time, jail requires no article after certain prepositions: hence in jail (“detained in a jail”), go to jail (“become detained in a jail”), and so on. The forms in a jail, go to a jail, and so on do exist, but tend to imply mere presence in the jail, rather than detention there. Compare also in the hoosegow/slammer.
    • Until the boardgame Monopoly popularised the spelling jail in the UK and Australia, gaol was the standard spelling in these countries.
    • In the United States, reference works sometimes draw a distinction between jails and prisons, saying that jails are for housing people before trial and prisons are for serving sentences, or that jails are run locally and prisons are run by states or the federal government. In popular speech this distinction is often not followed; and sentences are in fact served in some county jails (so the distinction is not rigorously upheld). In other parts of the English-speaking world, the two terms are often synonymous. The distinction between jail and lockup is not rigorous in American English; differentiation (if any) depends on locale, although the distinction between a police station and a county jail usually figures into it. A penitentiary is solely a place for serving sentences (a prison, not a jail).

    Derived terms

    Descendants

    Translations

    Verb

    jail (third-person singular simple present jails, present participle jailing, simple past and past participle jailed)Category:English lemmas#JAILCategory:English verbs#JAILCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#JAILCategory:Pages with entries#JAILCategory:Pages with 1 entry#JAIL

    1. To imprison.
      • 2013 August 10, “Can China clean up fast enough?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
        It has jailed environmental activists and is planning to limit the power of judicial oversight by handing a state-approved body a monopoly over bringing environmental lawsuits.
        Category:English terms with quotations#JAIL
      • 2020 September 9, “Network News: Man jailed for Hillingdon murder”, in Rail, page 25:
        A 22-year-old man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years for fatally stabbing 22-year-old Tashan Daniel in an unprovoked attack at Hillingdon Underground station on September 24 2019.
        Category:English terms with quotations#JAIL

    Synonyms

    Derived terms

    Translations

    References

    • “jail”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

    Anagrams

    Category:en:Prison#JAIL
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Category:Urdu terms with redundant transliterations Category:en:Computing Category:en:Horse racing Category:en:Prison