English Dictionary

TURNKEY

Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

IPA (US): 

 Dictionary entry overview: What does turnkey mean? 

TURNKEY (noun)
  The noun TURNKEY has 1 sense:

1. someone who guards prisonersplay

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


 Dictionary entry details 


TURNKEY (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who guards prisoners

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

gaoler; jailer; jailor; prison guard; screw; turnkey

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

keeper (someone in charge of other people)

law officer; lawman; peace officer (an officer of the law)


 Context examples 


She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterise that class.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I was to ask my way to such a place, and just short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on until I saw a turnkey.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

All this I did; and when at last I did see a turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in a debtors' prison, there was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Advice when most needed is least heeded." (English proverb)

"Pity without help does little good" (Breton proverb)

"Get together like brothers, and work together like strangers." (Arabic proverb)

"What comes easily is lost easily." (Egyptian proverb)



ALSO IN ENGLISH DICTIONARY:


© 2000-2023 AudioEnglish.org | AudioEnglish® is a Registered Trademark | Terms of use and privacy policy
Contact