Gaols

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A facility for the confinement of individuals accused or convicted of crimes
2. An establishment designed to detain individuals awaiting trial or sentencing
3. A place where people are held as punishment for offenses against the law

Etymology: "Gaols" is simply the third-person singular present form of the verb "gaol", meaning to put someone in a gaol. The noun and verb share the same root, which travels a long way from a cage to a prison cell. The story begins with the Latin "cavea", meaning cavity, coop or cage, which is also the source of the English word "cage". Late Latin formed a diminutive, "caveola", meaning a little cage, and Medieval Latin reshaped it into "gabiola". That form passed into Old French as "gaiole" and its variants, and arrived in Middle English as "gayole", "gaiol" and several other spellings, which is why the word appeared in so many forms before settling into the current spelling. The spelling "gaol" is pronounced like "jail", and the two words are alternative spellings of the same term, with "jail" the form most common in American English. Both descend from the same little cage, so the pair of spellings reflects two routes from one Latin ancestor.

Synonyms: jails, prisons, detention centers