Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Jail

Jail, n. [OE. jaile, gail, gayhol, OF. gaole, gaiole, jaiole, F. geôle, LL. gabiola, dim. of gabia cage, for L. cavea cavity, cage. See Cage.] A kind of prison; a building for the confinement of persons held in lawful custody, especially for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding. [Written also gaol.]

This jail I count the house of liberty. Milton.

Jail bird, a prisoner; one who has been confined in prison. [Slang] — Jail delivery, the release of prisoners from jail, either legally or by violence. — Jail delivery commission. See under Gaol. — Jail fever (Med.), typhus fever, or a disease resembling it, generated in jails and other places crowded with people; — called also hospital fever, and ship fever. — Jail liberties, or Jail limits, a space or district around a jail within which an imprisoned debtor was, on certain conditions, allowed to go at large. Abbott. — Jail lock, a peculiar form of padlock; — called also Scandinavian lock.

Jail, v. t. To imprison. [R.] T. Adams.

[Bolts] that jail you from free life. Tennyson.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.