Parolee

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual who is released from imprisonment under specific conditions is referred to as someone who has been granted supervised freedom after serving part of their sentence
2. Someone who has completed a portion of their prison term and is allowed to live in the community under certain regulations is described as a person enjoying provisional liberty
3. A person who is allowed to serve the remainder of their prison sentence outside of incarceration, often under strict oversight, is recognized as one who has been conditionally released

Etymology: "Parolee" is a plain formation: the noun "parole" with the suffix "-ee," which in English denotes a person who is the recipient of an action. A parolee is therefore someone who has been granted parole, the conditional release of a prisoner before the end of a sentence. The "-ee" ending follows the pattern of words such as "employee" and "trainee," where the suffix marks the one on the receiving end of the arrangement. The base word has a more dramatic past. It descends from ancient Greek "parabolē," a term built from "para," meaning "beside," and "ballein," meaning "to throw," so the original sense was something like a comparison laid alongside another thing. Through Latin "parabola" and Vulgar Latin "paraula," it reached Old French as "parole," meaning "word" or "speech." English borrowed that sense of "spoken word," and the legal meaning of a promise given on one's word developed from it. Prisoners released on their word of honour were said to be on parole, and that promise is the source of "parolee."

Synonyms: released prisoner, conditional releasee