I. jail 1 BrE AmE ( also gaol British English ) /dʒeɪl/ noun [uncountable and countable]
[ Date: 1200-1300 ; Language: Old French ; Origin: jaiole , from Latin caveola , from cavea 'cage' ]
a place where criminals are kept as part of their punishment, or where people who have been charged with a crime are kept before they are judged in a law court SYN prison :
He’s been in jail for three months already.
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COLLOCATIONS
■ verbs
▪ go to jail
They’re going to jail for a long time.
▪ send somebody to jail
The judge sent Meyer to jail for six years.
▪ put somebody in jail
The government would put him in jail if he stayed in the country.
▪ throw somebody in jail (=put somebody in jail)
Drunks were thrown in jail for a few days.
▪ spend time/three months/six years etc in jail
Griffiths spent three days in jail after pushing a policeman.
▪ serve time/five years etc in jail (=spend time in jail)
He was finally released after serving 27 years in jail.
▪ get out of jail
He got out of jail after five years for armed robbery.
▪ release somebody from jail
More than 30 of those arrested were released from jail for lack of evidence.
▪ escape from jail
The killer has escaped from jail.
■ ADJECTIVES/NOUN + jail
▪ the local jail
The suspects were taken to the local jail.
▪ a town/city/county jail
He was held without bail for thirty days in the county jail.
▪ a high-/top-/maximum-security jail
Some inmates at the high-security jail had been wrongfully imprisoned.
■ jail + NOUN
▪ a jail sentence
He’s serving a 7-year jail sentence.
▪ a jail term (=period of time in jail)
He served only half of his three-month jail term.
▪ a jail cell
The suspect was found dead in his jail cell.
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THESAURUS
▪ prison a large building where people are kept as a punishment for a crime or while they are waiting to go to court for their trial:
He was sentenced to five years in prison.
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Wandsworth Prison
▪ jail a prison, or a similar smaller building where prisoners are kept for a short time:
This old building is the jail that Butch Cassidy escaped from in 1887.
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He was taken to a cell in the Los Angeles County Jail.
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58% of prisoners are in jail for non-violent crimes.
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The strikers were harassed, beaten and put in jail for trespassing.
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Grover got caught for not paying his taxes and was sent to jail.
▪ gaol /dʒeɪl/ British English another way of spelling jail :
He spent the night in gaol.
▪ penitentiary /ˌpenəˈtenʃəri, ˌpenɪˈtenʃəri/ American English a large prison for people who are guilty of serious crimes:
the Ohio State Penitentiary
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The murderer served 10 years at the penitentiary in Stillwater.
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the abandoned federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island
▪ correctional facility American English formal an official word for a prison:
1,000 prisoners rioted at the North County Correctional Facility.
▪ detention centre British English , detention center American English a place where young people who have done something illegal are kept, because they are too young to go to prison. Also used about a place where people who have entered a country illegally are kept:
Kevin, who had been abandoned by his mother, had been in and out of detention centres all his life.
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a juvenile detention center
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Harmondsworth detention centre, near Heathrow airport
▪ open prison British English a prison in which prisoners have more freedom than in an ordinary prison, usually because their crimes were less serious:
In some open prisons, prisoners are allowed to go home at weekends.
▪ cell a small room in a prison or police station, where someone is kept as a punishment:
a prison cell
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Conditions were poor, and there were several prisoners to one cell.
II. jail 2 BrE AmE ( also gaol British English ) verb [transitive]
to put someone in jail SYN imprison
jail somebody for something
Watson was jailed for tax evasion.
jail somebody for two months/six years/life etc
They ought to jail her killer for life.