Other forms: cages, caged
A cage is a box of bars for keeping a creature in. A bird cage, in a cage, cage the animal.
The bars are what define it — a cage lets you see in and the animal see out, which is why the word is used for anything confining that does not hide. In zoos the word has largely been replaced by enclosure, which is a real change in thinking as much as in vocabulary. Note rattle somebody's cage, meaning to provoke them; and that cage and jail are related words.
1nouncageA box of bars for keeping a creature in.
“The parrot sat in its cage, repeating the words it had learned.”
2verbshutTo shut something in such a box.
“The tiger paced up and down, angry at being caged.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cage is an enclosure.
Old French cage comes from Latin cavea, a hollow place or enclosure, from cavus, hollow. Cave, cavity and gaol come from the same hollow.
Latin
cavea
Old French
cage
Middle English
cage
English, today
cage
From Middle English cage, from Old French cage, from Latin cavea. a doublet of cadge and cavea and related to jail.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA