gaol

UK/d͡ʒeɪl/US/d͡ʒeɪl/

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,046 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: gaols

Gaol is a prison, in older British spelling. Sent to gaol, the county gaol, gaol time.

It is said exactly like jail, which is the same word by another road, since one form came through Norman French and the other through Parisian. Britain moved officially to jail in the twentieth century, and gaol survives on old buildings.

Definitions of gaol

1noungaolA prison, in older British spelling.C1
“The highwayman spent his last night in the county gaol before his trial.”

gaol is a prison.

Where it comes from

Old French gaiole comes from Medieval Latin gabiola, a cage; jail is the same word through a different dialect.

Latin
caveola
Medieval Latin
gabiola
Old French
gaiole
Middle English
gayole
English, today
gaol

From Middle English gayole, gaiol, gaylle, gaille, gayle, gaile, via Old French gaiole, gayolle, gaole, from Medieval Latin gabiola, for Latin caveola, a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”). See also cage.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

gaol in the wild

The gaol was the first permanent one in South Australia and operated from 1841 until 1988.
Adelaide Gaol
By the time of its closure, on 31 January 1998, it had become the longest continuously-run gaol in Australia.
Maitland Gaol
The Richmond Gaol is a convict era building and tourist attraction in Richmond, Tasmania, and is the oldest intact gaol in Australia.
Richmond Gaol
Building of the gaol commenced in 1825, and predates the establishment of the penal colony at Port Arthur in 1833.
Richmond Gaol

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the gabiola family

cajole gaol

gaol — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,046 · point at the bar for the others

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