calaboose
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˌkæləˈbuːs/
Forms: form: calabooses
Etymology: From Cajun French calabousse, from Spanish calabozo. Doublet of calabozo.
Senses: examples: text: The slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so is the small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood. A citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard, was burned to death in the calaboose?'
ref: 1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 56, in Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC:
text: Bogator: (Still unbelieving) And you turned the calaboose over?
ref: 1937, Langston Hughes, When the Jack Hollers; or Careless Love: A Negro-Folk Comedy in Three Acts, in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 5. The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move, Leslie Catherine Sanders (ed.), Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002, pp. 392-3, Bogator: Aunt Billie, I thought you were in jail! Aunt Billie: I was, but I got tired of that little ole privy-sized jail, so I jest turned it over and come out! […]
text: […] he had but recently come out of Calaboose, where he had been serving a term for debt […]
ref: 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 150:
text: Thereupon the Administrator in Rabaul almost outdid himself in defending corporal punishment […] and demanded drastic alternative punishments, for the "calaboose" (Kalabus: Tok Pisin for prison) "is the native's paradise."
ref: 1995, Hermann Hiery, chapter 2, in The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I, University of Hawaii Press, page 82:
text: The first calaboose or city jail used by the officers of the law was located on Cumberland Street, just below the vacant lot adjacent to the Star Steam Laundry.
ref: 2001, Sylvia D. Lynch, To Protect and Serve: History of the Knoxville Police Department, 1849-2001, Turner Publishing Company, page 79:
text: In his opinion it would seem that certain usages of colloquial English in Australia and New Zealand in the early 1800s could have been selected as conventional usages in the developing contact jargon. Many of these usages are still part of colloquial speech today in both of these countries, for example: fella for 'one', […] no good, orright, calaboose, […]
ref: 2004, Darrell T. Tryon, Jean-Michel Charpentier, chapter 5, in Pacific Pidgins and Creoles: Origins, Growth and Development, Mouton de Gruyter, page 117:
synonyms: word: big house
word: borstal
word: bridewell
word: brig
word: calaboose
word: can
word: chokey
word: choky
word: clink
word: correctional facility
word: correctional institution
word: crowbar hotel
word: detention centre
word: dungeon
word: gaol
word: glasshouse
word: graybar hotel
word: guardhouse
word: gulag
word: hock
word: hole
word: honor farm
word: hoosegow
word: house of detention
word: iron house
word: jail
word: jailhouse
word: joint
word: jug
word: juvenile hall
word: juvie
word: lockup
word: nigger university
word: nick
word: pen
word: penal colony
word: penitentiary
word: pokey
word: porridge
word: prison
word: prison camp
word: prison farm
word: prison hulk
word: prison ship
word: queer ken
word: remand center
word: roundhouse
word: slammer
word: slam
word: stalag
word: stir
word: stockade
word: tronk
word: up the river
word: workhouse
word: Alcatraz
word: Attica
word: Bastille
word: Dartmoor
word: Devil's Island
word: Folsom
word: Hanoi Hilton
word: Leavenworth
word: Lefortovo
word: Maze
word: Pelican Bay
word: San Quentin
word: Sing Sing
word: Tower
glosses: A prison or jail/gaol.