Hoosegows
Hoosegow. Slammer. Clink. Cooler. What’s up with all these synonyms for jail?
The word jail comes from a Medieval Latin word for cage which was born of an earlier Latin word for hollow place or cavity. The noun form of jail showed up in English in the 1300s through a dialect of Northern France. The verb form didn’t show until the 1600s.
The term cooler began to mean jail in 1884. Its source word, cooler, showed up only ten years earlier, meaning a vessel in which liquids or other things are set to cool.
Slammer appeared in 1952, from the idea of the jail door slamming shut. Its source, slam, probably came from a Scandinavian source, & appeared in English in the 1670s meaning a severe blow.
The word prison has been with us since the 1100s and came from Latin through Vulgar Latin & French. The original Latin term, prehensionem, meant a taking.
The verb clink has been with us since the early 1300s — it’s thought to be an imitative word — imitative of the sound made by links of chain abrading one another. Though Southwark London’s infamous prison, the Clynke on Clink Street, was commissioned in 1144, its name didn’t get generalized to mean jail until the 1770s.
The Mexican/Spanish word juzgao, meaning tribunal or court, gave us the English word hoosegow in 1911. Juzgao is one of many offspring of the Latin word iudicare, which meant to judge.
Though joint didn’t officially mean jail until 1953, etymologists are pretty sure this meaning came from an older meaning of joint popular in the early 1400s, when joint meant building or establishment where shady activities take place.
In the 1700s the word brigantine was born to refer to two-masted schooners. Sailors quickly shortened the word to brig. About a century later, when many older brigs had been retired & deemed prison ships, the word brig took on new meaning.
Did any of these etymologies startle you? If so, please let me know in the comment section.
My thanks go out to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Wordnik, The Clink Prison, & Etymonline.
Hoosegow is one of my favorite words. It sounds so much less threatening than "prison" or "jail." I did not know about The Clynke on Clink Street or that "brig" came from "brigantine" (Although I should have figured that last one out.) I always learn something new and fabulous here, Mr. Monger!
ReplyDeleteHi Anne -- obviously not spending enough time with imprisoned individuals, eh? Thanks for coming by again, & for appreciating "hoosegow" -- I've always like it, too.
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