different between panopticon vs jail

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ??? (pân, “all”) + ??????? (optikós, “visible”). Coined by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1791.

Noun

panopticon (plural panopticons)

1. A type of prison where all the cells are visible from the center, particularly if it is not possible for someone in a cell to know if they are being watched.
2. (figuratively, by extension) A place in which people are subject to constant surveillance at totalitarian command.
   • 2013, Maryland v. King (U.S. Supreme Court No. 12–207), Justice Scalia dissenting:

     Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.

3. A room for the exhibition of novelties.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:panopticon.

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• gaol (UK, Australia, Ireland, dated)

Etymology

From Middle English gayole, gaylle, gaille, gayle, gaile, via Old French gaiole, gayolle, gaole, from Medieval Latin gabiola, for Vulgar Latin *caveola, a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”). Doublet of cage.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?e?l/
• Rhymes: -e?l

Noun

jail (countable and uncountable, plural jails)

1. A place or institution for the confinement of persons held in lawful custody or detention, especially for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
2. (uncountable) Confinement in a jail.
3. (horse racing) 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. (computing, FreeBSD) A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.

Usage notes

• (place of confinement): Like many nouns denoting places where people spend time, jail requires no article after certain prepositions: hence in jail (“detained in a jail”), go to jail (“become detained in a jail”), and so on. The forms in a jail, go to a jail, and so on do exist, but tend to imply mere presence in the jail, rather than detention there.
• Until Monopoly popularised the spelling jail in the UK and Australia, gaol was the standard spelling in these countries.
• In the United States, there is a formal distinction between the terms jail and prison – the former refers to facilities run by local governments, the later refers to facilities run by the state and federal governments; however, this distinction is not always observed in informal usage. By contrast, in most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the two terms are synonymous.

Synonyms

• (place of confinement): slammer, hoosegow

Hypernyms

• (place of confinement): correctional facility, correctional institution

Coordinate terms

• (place of confinement): big house, prison

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Hindi: ??? (jel)
• ? Urdu: ???? (jel)

Translations

Verb

jail (third-person singular simple present jails, present participle jailing, simple past and past participle jailed)

1. To imprison.

Synonyms

• imprison
• incarcerate

Translations

Anagrams

• jali