penitentiary
[noun]
Synonyms: jail, can, cooler, coop, hoosegow, keep, lockup, pen, reformatory, stockade

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Related Idioms: correctional institution

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English Thesaurus: prison, jail, gaol, penitentiary, correctional facility, ...

[TahlilGaran] English Synonym Dictionary ▲

pen‧i‧ten‧tia‧ry /ˌpenəˈtenʃəri, ˌpenɪˈtenʃəri/ noun (plural penitentiaries) [countable] American English
a prison – used especially in the names of prisons:
the North Carolina state penitentiary

[TahlilGaran] Dictionary of Contemporary English ▲

prison a large building where people are kept as a punishment for a crime or while they are waiting to go to court for their trial:
He was sentenced to five years in prison.
Wandsworth Prison
jail a prison, or a similar smaller building where prisoners are kept for a short time:
This old building is the jail that Butch Cassidy escaped from in 1887.
He was taken to a cell in the Los Angeles County Jail.
58% of prisoners are in jail for non-violent crimes.
The strikers were harassed, beaten and put in jail for trespassing.
Grover got caught for not paying his taxes and was sent to jail.
gaol /dʒeɪl/ British English another way of spelling jail:
He spent the night in gaol.
penitentiary /ˌpenəˈtenʃəri, ˌpenɪˈtenʃəri/ American English a large prison for people who are guilty of serious crimes:
the Ohio State Penitentiary
The murderer served 10 years at the penitentiary in Stillwater.
the abandoned federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island
correctional facility American English formal an official word for a prison:
1,000 prisoners rioted at the North County Correctional Facility.
detention centre British English, detention center American English a place where young people who have done something illegal are kept, because they are too young to go to prison. Also used about a place where people who have entered a country illegally are kept:
Kevin, who had been abandoned by his mother, had been in and out of detention centres all his life.
a juvenile detention center
Harmondsworth detention centre, near Heathrow airport
open prison British English a prison in which prisoners have more freedom than in an ordinary prison, usually because their crimes were less serious:
In some open prisons, prisoners are allowed to go home at weekends.
cell a small room in a prison or police station, where someone is kept as a punishment:
a prison cell
Conditions were poor, and there were several prisoners to one cell.
go to jail
They’re going to jail for a long time.
send somebody to jail
The judge sent Meyer to jail for six years.
put somebody in jail
The government would put him in jail if he stayed in the country.
throw somebody in jail (=put somebody in jail)
Drunks were thrown in jail for a few days.
spend time/three months/six years etc in jail
Griffiths spent three days in jail after pushing a policeman.
serve time/five years etc in jail (=spend time in jail)
He was finally released after serving 27 years in jail.
get out of jail
He got out of jail after five years for armed robbery.
release somebody from jail
More than 30 of those arrested were released from jail for lack of evidence.
escape from jail
The killer has escaped from jail.
the local jail
The suspects were taken to the local jail.
a town/city/county jail
He was held without bail for thirty days in the county jail.
a high-/top-/maximum-security jail
Some inmates at the high-security jail had been wrongfully imprisoned.
a jail sentence
He’s serving a 7-year jail sentence.
a jail term (=period of time in jail)
He served only half of his three-month jail term.
a jail cell
The suspect was found dead in his jail cell.

[TahlilGaran] English Thesaurus ▲