GAOL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does gaol mean? 

• GAOL (noun)
  The noun GAOL has 1 sense:

1. a correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government (either accused persons awaiting trial or convicted persons serving a sentence)

  Familiarity information: GAOL used as a noun is very rare.

• GAOL (verb)
  The verb GAOL has 1 sense:

1. lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

  Familiarity information: GAOL used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GAOL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government (either accused persons awaiting trial or convicted persons serving a sentence)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

clink; gaol; jail; jailhouse; pokey; poky; slammer

Hypernyms ("gaol" is a kind of...):

correctional institution (a penal institution maintained by the government)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gaol"):

bastille (a jail or prison (especially one that is run in a tyrannical manner))

holding cell (a jail in a courthouse where accused persons can be confined during a trial)

hoosegow; hoosgow (slang for a jail)

house of correction ((formerly) a jail or other place of detention for persons convicted of minor offences)

lockup (jail in a local police station)

workhouse (a county jail that holds prisoners for periods up to 18 months)

Derivation:

gaol (lock up or confine, in or as in a jail)

• GAOL (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they gaol    ... he / she / it gaols   
Past simple: gaoled   
Past participle: gaoled   
-ing form: gaoling   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

gaol; immure; imprison; incarcerate; jail; jug; lag; put away; put behind bars; remand

Context example:

the murderer was incarcerated for the rest of his life

Hypernyms (to "gaol" is one way to...):

confine; detain (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to gaol the prisoners

Derivation:

gaol (a correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government (either accused persons awaiting trial or convicted persons serving a sentence))

gaoler (someone who guards prisoners)

 Context examples 

“I have had diabetes for years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month. Yet I would rather die under my own roof than in a gaol.”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Send me away how you will and where you will; send keepers with me with whips and chains; let them take me in a strait-waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to a gaol; but let me go out of this.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The three men sprang in after him, a whip whistled in the darkness, and I had seen the last that I or any one else, save some charitable visitor to a debtors’ gaol, was ever again destined to see of Sir Lothian Hume, the once fashionable Corinthian.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They lived strange lives, these men, and they died strange deaths—some by their own hands, some as beggars, some in a debtor’s gaol, some, like the most brilliant of them all, in a madhouse in a foreign land.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)