jail

Etymology
From, , , , , via , , , from , for , a diminutive of. and related to. More at.

Noun

 * 1) A place or institution for the confinement of persons held against their will in lawful custody or detention, especially (in US usage) a place where people are held for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
 * 2)  Confinement in a jail.
 * 3)  The condition created by the requirement that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for some period of time (usually 30 days).
 * 4) In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
 * 5)  A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.
 * 1)  Confinement in a jail.
 * 2)  The condition created by the requirement that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for some period of time (usually 30 days).
 * 3) In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
 * 4)  A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.
 * 1) In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
 * 2)  A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.

Usage notes

 * Like many nouns denoting places where people spend time, requires no article after certain prepositions: hence, , and so on. The forms , , and so on do exist, but tend to imply mere presence in the jail, rather than detention there. Compare also in the hoosegow/slammer.
 * Until the boardgame Monopoly popularised the spelling jail in the UK and Australia, gaol was the standard spelling in these countries.
 * In the United States, reference works sometimes draw a distinction between jails and prisons, saying that jails are for housing people before trial and prisons are for serving sentences, or that jails are run locally and prisons are run by states or the federal government. In popular speech this distinction is often not followed; and sentences are in fact served in some county jails (so the distinction is not rigorously upheld). In other parts of the English-speaking world, the two terms are often synonymous. The distinction between jail and lockup is not rigorous in American English; differentiation (if any) depends on locale, although the distinction between a police station and a county jail usually figures into it. A penitentiary is solely a place for serving sentences (a prison, not a jail).

Translations

 * Adyghe: хьэпс
 * Afrikaans:
 * Albanian:
 * Arabic: ,
 * Armenian:
 * Azerbaijani: həbs
 * Basque: espetxe
 * Belarusian: турма́, астро́г
 * Belizean Creole: jayl
 * Bulgarian:, апс
 * Burmese:
 * Catalan:
 * Cherokee: ᏗᏓᏍᏚᏗ
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese: 監倉
 * Mandarin:
 * Czech:
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto: arestejo
 * Finnish: poliisivankila; ;  ,
 * French: ,
 * Galician:, , prisión
 * Georgian: ციხე, საპატიმრო, საპყრობილე
 * German:
 * Greek: ,
 * Hebrew: ,
 * Hindi:, , , क़ैदख़ाना
 * Hungarian: ,
 * Ido:
 * Indonesian:, , ,
 * Ingrian: tyrmä
 * Interlingua: carcere, prision
 * Italian:, , gattabuia,
 * Japanese:
 * Khmer:
 * Korean: ,
 * Lao:
 * Latin: carcer, ferriterium
 * Latvian:
 * Lithuanian:
 * Macedonian: затвор, апс
 * Malay:
 * Mi'kmaq: laplesoon
 * Mongolian: хар гэр
 * Navajo: awáalya
 * Norwegian:
 * Ojibwe: gibaakwa'odiiwigamig
 * Okinawan: 牢屋
 * Old English: cweartern, carcern
 * Persian:
 * Plautdietsch: Kjarkja, Jefenkjniss
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Punjabi: ਜੇਲ੍ਹ
 * Romanian:, ,
 * Russian:
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: затвор, тамница
 * Roman: ,
 * Slovak: väzenie
 * Slovene:
 * Somali: xabsi
 * Spanish:, , , ,
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog: piitan
 * Tajik:
 * Thai:
 * Tibetan: བཙོན་ཁང
 * Tocharian B: prautke
 * Turkish: ,
 * Tuvan: кара-бажың
 * Ukrainian: ,
 * Urdu: کاراگار, بندیگھر, جیل, قیدخانہ
 * Vietnamese:, nhà tạm giam
 * Welsh:, jael
 * White Hmong: nkuaj
 * Yiddish: טורמע
 * Yonaguni: 牢屋
 * Yup'ik: kantalaq
 * Zhuang:


 * Finnish: ;
 * Greek:
 * Hungarian:, , , ,
 * Italian:
 * Polish:


 * Finnish: väliaikainen kilpailurajoitus myynnin jälkeen


 * Finnish:

Verb

 * 1) To imprison.