Jail
nounA place where people are held in legal custody, especially while awaiting trial or serving a short sentence.
How to spell jail
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce jail
What does jail mean?
- nounA place where people are held in legal custody, especially while awaiting trial or serving a short sentence.
- verbTo put or keep someone in prison.
Jail in a sentence
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noun
The suspect spent the weekend in jail before the hearing.
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verb
The court could jail him for up to two years.
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noun
The old county jail has been converted into a museum.
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verb
Authorities decided to jail the protesters overnight.
Where does jail come from?
Language of origin: French
Jail traces back to the Latin word cavea, meaning 'a hollow place', 'a cage', or 'an enclosure for animals', which is also the ancestor of the English word 'cage'. From cavea developed a Vulgar Latin diminutive form, caveola, meaning 'a little cage', and this passed into Old French in two regional shapes: the central French jaiole and the Norman French gaiole. English borrowed both, which is why the word historically had two competing spellings, the modern 'jail' descending from the central French form and the older 'gaol' descending from the Norman one. For centuries British writing favoured 'gaol' even though everyone pronounced it as 'jail', a mismatch that finally pushed the spelling 'jail' to dominate everywhere by the twentieth century. The shared cavea origin is a handy memory hook: a jail was simply a cage for people.
How the word is built
- jail (from Old French jaiole/gaiole: cage, cell)
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