Jail

English

Noun

Jail (countable and uncountable; plural jails)

1. A place for the confinement of persons held in lawful custody or detention, especially for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
2. (uncountable) Confinement in a jail.
3. (slang) school

   I have to go to jail 5 days a week.

4. (horse racing) The requirements that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for (usually) 30 days.

Notes

• (prison): 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.

Until the popularity of Monopoly in UK and Australia, gaol was the standard spelling in these countries.

Synonyms

• slammer

Coordinate terms

• (place of confinement): big house, hoosegow, prison

Derived terms

• jailbait
• jailbird
• jailbreak
• jailer
• jail sentence

Verb

Jail (third-person singular simple present Jails, present participle Jailing, simple past and past participle Jailed)

1. To imprison.

Synonyms

• imprison

Adjectives for Jail

fantastic; infernal; distasteful; pleasant; comfortable.

Verbs for Jail

to—; confine to—; deliver from—; deposit in—; detain in—; dwell in—; free from—; guard—; imprison in—; incarcerate in—; languish in—; parole from—; patrol—; release from—; secure in—; slap into—; — confines; —corrects; —penalizes; —rehabilitates.

Thesaurus

POW camp, bastille, beleaguer, beset, besiege, big house, black hole, blockade, bolt in, borstal, borstal institution, bound, box in, bridewell, brig, bucket, caboose, cage, calaboose, can, cast in prison, cell, chamber, chokey, clap in jail, clap up, clink, close in, college, compass, concentration camp, condemned cell, confine, constrain, contain, cooler, coop, coop in, coop up, cordon, cordon off, corral, death cell, death house, death row, detain, detention camp, encircle, enclose, encompass, enshrine, federal prison, fence in, forced-labor camp, freezer, gaol, guardhouse, guardroom, hedge in, hem in, hold captive, hold in captivity, hold prisoner, hoosegow, house in, house of correction, house of detention, immure, impound, imprison, incarcerate, include, industrial school, intern, internment camp, jailhouse, jug, keep, kennel, labor camp, leaguer, lock in, lock up, lockup, maximum-security prison, mew, mew up, minimum-security prison, nick, oubliette, pen, pen in, penal colony, penal institution, penal settlement, penitentiary, pocket, pokey, prison, prison camp, prisonhouse, quarantine, quod, rail in, reform school, reformatory, rock pile, send down, shrine, shut in, shut up, slammer, sponging house, stable, state prison, stir, stockade, surround, the hole, throw into jail, tollbooth, training school, wall in, wrap, yard, yard up

Alternative forms

• gaol (British, Australian)

Etymology

From Middle English gaiole, gayle, gaile, gayll, via Old French gaiole, gaole, geole, geole < Medieval Latin gabiola, for *caveola, a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”).

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪl

Translations

Noun

prison — see prison

Verb

imprison — see imprison