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The prison, not "in prison"

ThomasK

Senior Member
Belgium, Dutch
There has already been a nice thread on "'(being) in prison", but this time I would like to focus on how we describe/ name/ ... the prison, often a matter of metaphor. I'd say the formal words come first, the informal ones follow after that but only there is a noun in the expression.

Dutch: gevangenis < vangen, to catch
(while falling [like in a safetynet: vang-net],
while getting hold of them while on the run (caught...),
while fishing and getting hold of one big one,
while welcoming the weak ones (like children at daycare (opvang, catch-up), like refugees at a refugee centre (id.))

English: prison < prison < prendre, apprehendre (take, take in?)
Jail gives an idea of cage, cell, bars. A visual image

Prison is a big penitentiary. Maybe the cells don't even have bars. The idea of catch, being caught, is there.
Penitentiary is often shortened to pen; a place where animals are held.

Hoosegow sounds humorous. A small lock up facility. Detention, awaiting a long time something/ nothing to happen. From Spanish- juzgado (to be judged).

Slammer. Audio image. You definitely hear that sound in your mind of a door locking behind the prisoner in a place that lacks any comfort.

Incarceration. Punished, confined, to suffer, to pay for their crimes.

Workhouse. A facility where the prisoners have to work hard to pay for their room and board.

Up the river. Far and removed from society.

The only word that can sound remotely positive is rehabilitation facility. To make good again, reeducate, recover.
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In Catalan:

presó = the common word for prison, jail
[From the Latin prehensione 'act of seizing/arrest']

càrcer = synonym for presó, but sounds archaic or poetic. As in Portuguese or Italian, it's a masculine word
[From the Latin carcere 'prison']

presidi = similar to presó, specially for serious convicts, but rather associated to a garrisoned place
[From the Latin praesidium 'garrison']

penal = sort of prison, specially for serious crimes
[From a general establiment penal 'penal establishment']

penitenciari = prison, penitentiary
[From a general establiment penitenciari 'penitentiary establishment']

calabós = the space or room in a castle, prison, the barracks, etc, destined for prisoners
[From the Spanish calabozo, perhaps from a Late Latin *calafodiu, from fodere 'to dig']

masmorra = a dungeon
[From the Spanish mazmorra, from the Arabic maṭmūra 'underground storage']

tàvega = a more genuine but archaic synonym for calabós/masmorra
[From the Arabic ṭabaqa 'storey, level']

garjola = the most common colloquial word for prison
[Probably from the Late Latin caveola 'little cage']

gàbia = informal and extended usage of the word 'cage'
[From the Latin cavea 'cage']

cangrí = colloquial and dated, slang from Catalan Gypsies
[From the Catalan Calo cangrí 'church or mosque, place for penance', from Romani khangeri, perhaps from Persian *kongere 'tower']

Informal expressions:

· a l'ombra = in the shade
· entre quatre parets = within four walls
· a redossa = at shelter
Jail gives an idea of cage, cell, bars. A visual image

Prison is a big penitentiary. Maybe the cells don't even have bars. The idea of catch, being caught, is there.
Penitentiary is often shortened to pen; a place where animals are held. Not a place for punishment or for repenting?

Hoosegow sounds humorous. A small lock up facility. Detention, awaiting a long time something/ nothing to happen. From Spanish- juzgado (to be judged).

Slammer. Audio image. You definitely hear that sound in your mind of a door locking behind the prisoner in a place that lacks any comfort.

Incarceration. Punished, confined (carcer/ Dutch kerker: pit kind of place, to be forgotten) to suffer, to pay for their crimes.

Workhouse. A facility where the prisoners have to work hard to pay for their room and board.

Up the river. Far and removed from society.

The only word that can sound remotely positive is rehabilitation facility. To make good again, reeducate, recover.
Very interesting list. The last one is a euphemism to my mind, or it reflects an idealist view.
Very interesting list. The last one is a euphemism to my mind, or it reflects an idealist view.
I imagine penitentiaries as places where people are treated badly, herded around like animals. So I associate a pen(itenciary) with being treated like an animal. Literally, it's an inhumane place.
A pen literally prevents people/animals from escaping an enclosed area. For example a pig pen on a farm...
There are also "baby pens" or playpens to keep babies from getting out and hurting themselves. A pen could be seen as keeping something contained inside or not letting something escape outside. I suppose the punishment idea is not explicit. Security is. Yet a dog yapping to get out of its pen is not happy because it wants freedom.

Interesting that incarceration might be related to cancer. It brings back the idea of a place to keep gravely sick people.

Yes, rehabilitation is an idealistic view of things. Maybe it will make the prisoner well/good/ a normal citizen again? That assumes criminals are sick and can be cured.
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Russian: the general term for prison is тюрьма, but to be more precise, it implies the pretrial facility, whereas in the modern Russian penicitiary system, the real sentence is further served in the camps with obligatory work (typically in workshops inside the detention area - sewing, furniture, etc. - but as we know, at certain historical moments they were to be sent to large construction sites). The camp is colloquially called зона - lit. "zone", so being there is being "on the zone" (на зоне), while being in the pretrial prison is в тюрьме. The officialy used term for the camp facility is (исправительная) колония "improving (i.e. penetentiary) colony". There's also an ironic euphemism, места не столь отдаленные "the places of moderate remoteness" derived from a Tsarist-era formal expression regarding the geographic zone of exile.

For the pretrial place or a "traditional" kind of a jail where you are isolated but do not go to work, there are also colloquial but outdating terms such as каталажка - katalazhka, the dictionary says it's a twisted "takelage", кутузка - kutuzka, presumed to be from Kutuzov the former times police chief, цугундер - tsugunder, supposedly from German "zu hundert" meaning punishment of soldiers with twigs, but it's rather of a stockade. The folksy/poetic expressive term темница - meaning a dark place - is usual in fairy tales; the stilistically similar узилище - the stem means "bonds" and the suffix implies a place related to that; застенки - "place behind the wall". There's also the ironic euphemism казённая квартира/ казённый дом - "state-owned appartment/house".
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I imagine penitentiaries as places where people are treated badly, herded around like animals. So I associate a pen(itenciary) with being treated like an animal. Literally, it's an inhumane.
I can agree with your association, but etymonline.com does not see that etymo link, rather it says that it is not clear: "perhaps related to Old English pinn "pin, peg" (see pin (n.)) on the notion of a bolted gate or else "structure made of pointed stakes".
Interesting that incarceration might be related to cancer. It brings back the idea of a place to keep gravely sick people.
However, I only mentioned the Latin word caRcer, not cancer. I love all kinds of associations, but they can lead off the right track. So in those cases you might refer to that interesting semantic link, but I'd suggest you do not refer to it as etymological.
Yes, rehabilitation is an idealistic view of things. Maybe it will make the prisoner well/good/ a normal citizen again? That assumes criminals are sick and can be cured.
This could turn into an interesting new thread at the Café or elsewhere, but let's not treat it here. (Just btw: criminals are often victims of all kinds of circumstances... But let's not pursue this discussion here, except if there is an etymological link. Thanks!)
In Russian, the common colloquial verb for being / going to prison, is "to sit" (сидеть - imperf. for the ongoing process, сесть - perf. for the inchoative "sit down", "take a seat" ); (...)
i recognize that from Dutch, but let's not go into the in prison expressions and only focus on the name of the "institution".

i am suddenly reminded of huis van bewaring in the Netherlands, where people stay before their proces. Literally: the house of safeguarding but be-waren contains a reference to guarding: w-aar = gu-ar-d (IE *wer).
The formal phrasing is отбывать наказание - "to serve a sentence", but literally like "to fulfill (the time of) the punishment":
May I suggest that you copy all of the above to the in prison thread (and then delete it)?
The general term for prison is тюрьма, /tjurma/, but to be more precise, it implies the pre-trial facility, whereas in the modern Russian penicitiary system, the real sentence is further served in the camps with obligatory work (typically in workshops inside the detention area - sewing, furniture, etc. - but as we know, at certain historical moments they were to be sent to large construction sites). The camp is colloquially called зона - lit. "zone" (implying "of detention"), so being there is being "on the zone" (на зоне), while being in the pretrial prison is в тюрьме - and this explains the beforementioned omission of the location object in the "sitting" phrase: with "in the prison" explicit, it's rather the pretrial, but once you omit it, the "sitting" can be generalized to the "zone" as well.
Wikipedia suggests that the /tjurma/ originally refers to a tower, as in the German "Turm", but adds:" from Old French *torn , from Latin turrem /turrim , accusative singular of turris , whence English tower". I suppose "zone" could be viewed as a euphemism.
In Slovenian, we have zapor as the general word for a prison. It is a deverbial from zapreti (to close, perfective), so the meaning is "the closed place". There is also pripor (from pripreti, to nearly close but not fully - for example "priprta vrata" for door ajar) which I believe is called detention or custody in English, it is where you are placed after being arrested and awaiting the charges/trial. A person in a zapor is a zapornik and the detained one is a pripornik.

Another word for prison is ječa. This word is quite expressive and wouldn't be used in modern proceedings, but is frequently featuring in fairy tales, biographies, stories about the past etc. It comes from the verb jeti (to seize, catch, apprehend), so it means "being caught". It is commonly used with the verb "to throw", so vreči (nekoga) v ječo, to throw (somebody) in prison. Such a person is a jetnik.

Then we have keha which is a bit humorous in my opinion, and it comes from Bavarian German Keiche. This one is only ever used expressively or disparagingly.

Prisons are officially called Zavod za prestajanje kazni zapora, the Institution for serving the penalty of prison. A person in prison is colloquially said to "be sitting" sedi or "is gone to sit" šel/šla je sedet, similarly to Russian mentioned above.
A person in a zapor is a zapornik and the detained one is a pripornik.
Interesting considerations...
Another word for prison is ječa. This word is quite expressive and wouldn't be used in modern proceedings, but is frequently featuring in fairy tales, biographies, stories about the past etc. It comes from the verb jeti (to seize, catch, apprehend), so it means "being caught". It is commonly used with the verb "to throw", so vreči (nekoga) v ječo, to throw (somebody) in prison. Such a person is a jetnik.
Can't imagine a separate word for this fairy-tale word, allthough the kerker might be used for that (a deep pit, carcer(a) in Latin, I believe, still recognizable in the English incarceration).
Then we have keha which is a bit humorous in my opinion, and it comes from Bavarian German Keiche. This one is only ever used expressively or disparagingly.
I looked it up at dwds.de and found out that it might be with keuchen, something like "to cough" in English, which might suggest that in a prison or kerker you cough and sigh until you die... Just an idea!
Prisons are officially called Zavod za prestajanje kazni zapora, the Institution for serving the penalty of prison. A person in prison is colloquially said to "be sitting" sedi or "is gone to sit" šel/šla je sedet, similarly to Russian mentioned above.
Google T suggests "Institute for the Execution of Penal Sanctions". not better, but which of both, "penalty of prison" or "penal sanction", is a more literal translation of "zapora" - or is "zapor" something like punishment, implicitly suggesting in a prison?
Swedish:
Fängelse - prison, from fånga - (to) catch. A prisoner is en fånge and they are fängslad / fängslade - captive / in captivity. A prisoner is placed in an anstalt / fångvårdsanstalt - institution (the phyical building) / rehabilitation centre (prisoner care/management centre).

Tukthus - chasten house, penitentiary, an old word used for where prisoners were put.
Fästning - a fortress to protect the country, but many of them were also used as prisons from the 14th century until 1888, and fästningsfångar (fortess prisoners) were those who had comitted the worst crimes.

Sitta på kåken - sit in the shack
Sitta bakom lås och bom - sit behind lock and bar

Sitta i kurran / finkan / häktet / arresten - be under arrest, usually before being judged and sent to prison
You must be a neighbour: fänga resembles vangen in Dutch very much. ;-)

Tukthus reminds me of German Zuchthaus (NL tuchthuis). Uncommon in Dutch, but where people were (supposed to be) "disciplined" (tucht in NL) or taught discipline...

Sitta bakom lås och bom - sit behind lock and bar = Dutch achter slot en grendel (lock and bolt)
Google T suggests "Institute for the Execution of Penal Sanctions". not better, but which of both, "penalty of prison" or "penal sanction", is a more literal translation of "zapora" - or is "zapor" something like punishment, implicitly suggesting in a prison?
It's much of a muchness to be fair.

Kazen zapora = the penalty of prison

Zaporna kazen = the prison penalty

Just a matter of making it "[noun] of [noun]" or "[adjective] [noun]".

"Prestajanje" is not really execution, more like "the state of being". So it is the institute in which you "endure" the penalty, I suppose.
Wikipedia suggests that the /tjurma/ originally refers to a tower, as in the German "Turm", but adds:" from Old French *torn , from Latin turrem /turrim , accusative singular of turris , whence English tower". I suppose "zone" could be viewed as a euphemism.
The Russian wikipedia says that it can be Turkic as well.
"Zone" is likely based on that the facility inside has an "industrial zone" and a "living zone", so through the idea that you work in the industrial one.
(I added some more terms in my first post and deleted the verb-related extra stuff - sorry).
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I imagine penitentiaries as places where people are treated badly, herded around like animals. So I associate a pen(itenciary) with being treated like an animal. Literally, it's an inhumane place.
A pen literally prevents people/animals from escaping an enclosed area. For example a pig pen on a farm...
There are also "baby pens" or playpens to keep babies from getting out and hurting themselves. A pen could be seen as keeping something contained inside or not letting something escape outside. I suppose the punishment idea is not explicit. Security is. Yet a dog yapping to get out of its pen is not happy because it wants freedom.
'Penitentiary' in the US is associated with maximum-security prisons, but I think a penitentiary and a prison overlap in what they're like and who are their inmates. 'Jail' is different: a smaller facility for people who are awaiting trial or serving relatively short sentences. In the US, a county jail and a state prison are more obviously, at least to me, two different kinds of places. When people in the US talk about a person who's in jail, in prison, or in a penitentiary, they often refer to the place by its specific name rather than by the generic term for the place: people are in Dannemora, Sing Sing, Rikers, etc.

'Pen' as a short form of 'penitentiary' could well have connotations of 'animal pen', but the word originally had to do with remorse, from the same root as repent and penitent. In English there is (or was) also reformatory and reform school. I remember them as being for people who were younger than the usual jail prisoner. They were supposed to turn kids away from the criminal life, as I recall. I wonder if 'penitentiary' and 'reformatory' were consciously adopted for places where people were imprisoned during the era of prison reform in the 18th century.
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càrcer = synonym for presó, but sounds archaic or poetic. As in Portuguese or Italian, it's a masculine word
[From the Latin carcere 'prison']
In Italian, the word carcere is as common as prigione/prison, probably even a bit more. It's masculine in the singular but is generally feminine in the plural, so we have il carcere and le carceri.
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A few thoughts on English English names:

gaol, jail, can, jug, nick, pokey, big house, chokey, borstal (for younger offenders, named after a village in Kent), birdcage*, bridewell, aviary*, His/Her Majesty's hotel/hostel (where you are a 'guest'. Abbreviated formally as 'HMP'), panopticon**, gulag, bastille.

The last two in this list derive from foreign institutions.

* Not only because you are encaged like a bird, but also possibly because 'you are doing time' (rhyming slang: 'bird lime'. Hence, 'you are doing bird'.)

** Panopticon - Wikipedia

_________

The Welsh word for a prison is 'carchar' /'kar.Xar/ which obviously derives from Latin. You may be interested in the grammar here, especially as we don't have an indefinite article in Welsh.

Mewn carchar - In a prison
Yn y carchar - In prison, In the prison
Yng Ngharchar Armely - In Armley Prison (officially, HMP Leeds)
It's much of a muchness to be fair.

Kazen zapora = the penalty of prison

Zaporna kazen = the prison penalty

Just a matter of making it "[noun] of [noun]" or "[adjective] [noun]".

"Prestajanje" is not really execution, more like "the state of being". So it is the institute in which you "endure" the penalty, I suppose.
Thanks for that information. Just wondered...
The folksy/poetic expressive term темница - meaning a dark place - is usual in fairy tales; the stilistically similar узилище - the stem means "bonds" and the suffix implies a place related to that
I would somewhat disagree. Узилище (uzílishche) won't occur beyond religious, poetic or extremely elevated context at all. Curiously, the word if of Old Russian origin, not of Church Slavonic (as one would expect from its use). Темница (temnítsa), in the meantime, will occur not only in fairy tales, but also plainly as a historicism in the context of medieval Russia.
There's also the ironic euphemism казённая квартира/ казённый дом - "state-owned appartment/house".
That's definitely dated (a half of modern speakers won't probably know what казенный means). However, there's also места не столь отдаленные (mestá ne stól' otdalyónnyie, ~'the places that aren't particularly far away', literally 'places not so much remoted') as a general euphemistic reference to the penitentiary system.
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In Italian, the word carcere is as common as prigione/prison, probably even a bit more. It's masculine in the singular but is generally feminine in the plural, so we have il carcere and le carceri.
I had no idea! Very interesting. Any reasons why this is so?
Any reasons why this is so?
As far as carcere is concerned, this term could be both masculine and feminine in Italian. In contemporary standard Italian, the masculine in the singular and the feminine in the plural are mostly used. The same could be said of other words such as il gregge (flock of sheep), which is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural le greggi (even i greggi exists but tends to sound regional or literary. Even the word orecchio (ear) tends to be used as a masculine noun in the singular, while in the plural the prevalent form is the feminine le orecchie, although gli orecchi still exists but is certainly less used.
Last but not least, there is also a whole series of nouns that change gender from masculine to feminine. These plural feminine nouns retain the ancient Latin ending in -a of the neuter plural, such as l'uovo- le uova; il labbro- le labbra - il ginocchio le ginocchia egg - eggs, lip - lips, knee - knees and so forth.
The process of gender shift to a group of masculine nouns during the transition from the singular to the plural is known in various Indo-European languages, such as Romanian, Italian, Slovak, Czech, Modern Greek, etc.
It's interesting the change always goes masculine singular to feminine plural and never feminine singular to masculine plural.
Well, actually there exist (very rare) examples of nouns that change from feminine singular to masculine plural.

Among these, the most notable (which is therefore important to know) is "eco" (from the Latin echo, Greek ἠχώ) — "echo" in English.
Normally, the singular is "la/una eco", feminine, (more often written "l'eco" or "un'eco"), while the plural is "gli echi" (/ˈʎɛki/ or /ʎiˈɛki/), masculine.

However, although less widespread, there is also a use of "l'eco/un eco" in the masculine singular.
The Greek word for prison is «φυλακή» [filaˈci] (f.) < Ancient Greek feminine noun «φυλακή» /phylɐˈkɛː/.
Formally in judicial jargon it's called «σωφρονιστικό κατάστημα» [s̠o̞fɾo̞nis̠t̠iˈko̞ kaˈt̠as̠.t̠ima] (both neuter) --> penitentiary facility; the adjective comes from the Ancient Greek masculine noun «σωφρονισμός» /sɔːphroniˈsmos/ a deverbal from the verb «σωφρονίζω» /sɔːphroˈni.s͡dɔː/ --> to come to one's senses, chasten, be prudent, reform, correct, a compound: Adj. «σῶς» /sɔ́.ɔ̀s/ + feminine «φρήν» /phrɛːn/.

The noun «κατάστημα» is an ancient one «κατάστημα» /kɐˈtɐ.stɛːmɐ/ (n.) --> condition, state lit. that which is standing, facility, a deverbal from the verb «καθίστημι» /kɐˈthi.stɛːmi/ a compound: Prefix and preposition «κατά» /kɐˈtɐ/ + athematic verb «ἵστημι» /ˈhi.stɛːmi/.

Metaphorically it's called:
-«Στενή» [s̠t̠e̞ˈni] (f.) --> chokey/choky lit. narrow, tight < Ancient Greek adj. «στενός» /steˈnos/.
-«Μπουζού» [buˈz̠u/ (f.) possibly from Aromanian buzunar, a reborrowing: Byzantine Greek «ὑποζωνάριον» /ypozɔˈnɐ.rion/ (n.) --> large pocket, leather purse (prefix & preposition «ὑπό» /hyˈpo/ + feminine «ζώνη» /ˈs͡dɔː.nɛː/) > Aromanian buzunar > Early Modern Greek «μπουζουνάρα» [buz̠uˈna.ɾa] (f.) > slang «μπουζού».
-«Ψειρού» [p͡s̠iˈɾu] (f.) --> place full of lice < Ancient Greek feminine noun «φθείρ» /phtheːr/ --> louse (possibly Pre-Greek) contaminated with the word for flea, «ψύλλα» /ˈp͡syl.lɐ/ (f.).
-«Αγκέλω» [aɲˈɟe̞.lo̞] (f.) aphetism of «καγκέλω» [kaɲˈɟe̞.lo̞] (f.) < Byzantine Greek neuter «κάγκελον» /ˈkɐn.kelon/ --> rail, railing < Latin cancellus.
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'Penitentiary' in the US is associated with maximum-security prisons, but I think a penitentiary and a prison overlap in what they're like and who are their inmates. 'Jail' is different: a smaller facility for people who are awaiting trial or serving relatively short sentences. In the US, a county jail and a state prison are more obviously, at least to me, two different kinds of places. When people in the US talk about a person who's in jail, in prison, or in a penitentiary, they often refer to the place by its specific name rather than by the generic term for the place: people are in Dannemora, Sing Sing, Rikers, etc.

'Pen' as a short form of 'penitentiary' could well have connotations of 'animal pen', but the word originally had to do with remorse, from the same root as repent and penitent. In English there is (or was) also reformatory and reform school. I remember them as being for people who were younger than the usual jail prisoner. They were supposed to turn kids away from the criminal life, as I recall. I wonder if 'penitentiary' and 'reformatory' were consciously adopted for places where people were imprisoned during the era of prison reform in the 18th century.
Interesting considerations, thanks! I can imagine that kind of schools, not so much prisons or camps referring to reeducation, except in totalitarian regimes, where reeducation was on the programme, not so much discipline itself, I think.
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