cage

From Middle English cage, from Old French cage, from Latin cavea. Doublet of cadge and cavea and related to jail.

• IPA^(key): /keɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -eɪdʒ

cage (plural cages)

1. An enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.

   We keep a bird in a cage.

   The tigers are in a cage to protect the public.

   The most dangerous prisoners are locked away in a cage.

   • c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], lines 48–49:

     For his father had / never a house but the cage.

   • 1642, Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison, stanza 4, lines 1–2:

     Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.

2. The passenger compartment of a lift.
3. (field hockey or ice hockey, water polo) The goal.
4. (US, derogatory, slang) An automobile.
5. (figuratively) Something that hinders freedom.
   • 1989 December 17, Nan Donald, “Broken Hearts, Messed Up Families, And New Beginnings”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 23, page 9:

     Schwartz examines with dignity and tenderness the battles within and without of […] families, created and biological, and the cages and freedom they can provide.

   • 2007, Jeremy Gara, Régine Chassagne (lyrics and music), “My Body Is a Cage”, in Neon Bible, performed by Arcade Fire:

     My body is a cage / That keeps me from dancing with the one I love / But my mind holds the key

6. (slang) A prison or prison cell.
   • 1985 December 14, Robyn Shawnee Jackson, “Kouuntry And Kitten”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 22, page 4:

     The 'out of the closet' lesbians and gay men here in the Iowa Cages are harassed and discriminated daily by oppressive pigs, believe me, I know, as a lesbian I've experienced it first hand and seen my fellow lesbian and gay friends oppressed to where I'm ready to explode.

7. (athletics) The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
8. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.
   • 1842, Joseph Gwilt, “A Glossary of Terms Used by Architects”, in An Encyclopædia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical‎^[1], 2nd edition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, published 1851, page 941:

     Cage, in carpentry, is an outer work of timber inclosing another within it. Thus the cage of a stair is the wooden inclosure that encircles it.

9. (engineering) A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, such as a ball valve.
10. A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
11. (mining) The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
12. (baseball) The catcher's wire mask.
13. (graph theory) A regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.
14. In killer sudoku puzzles, an irregularly-shaped group of cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of sudoku.

• → Zulu: ikheji

cage (third-person singular simple present cages, present participle caging, simple past and past participle caged)

1. (transitive) To confine in a cage; to put into and keep in a cage.
   • 1923, Animal World: An Advocate of Humanity, page 33:

     And the row of human captors, ever leering, They who caged me, Know their power and gloat on my captivity.

   • 2000, Bernard Livingston, Zoo: Animals, People, Places, →ISBN, page 95:

     Laying out the zoo on horseback, he went about making plans to combine his scrubby mesas and canyons with moats, and thereby eliminate caging many large animals—a revolutionary advance in American zoo design.

   • 2010, Gail Damerow, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition, →ISBN:

     The industrial practice of caging commercial laying hens has given caged housing a bad narne.

   • 2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4:

     Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.

   • 2018, Stomu Yamash’ta, Tadashi Yagi, Stephen Hill, The Kyoto Manifesto for Global Economics, →ISBN:

     By caging chickens, farmers broke the cycle and had to busy themselves with feeding, cleaning and pest control activities.

2. (transitive, slang) To imprison.

   The serial killer was caged for life.

3. (transitive, figuratively) To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
4. (aviation) To immobilize an artificial horizon.

   To prevent damage to its gimbal mountings during extreme aerobatic maneuvers, the navball should be caged before the start of a display sequence.

5. To track individual responses to direct mail, either (advertising) to maintain and develop mailing lists or (politics) to identify people who are not eligible to vote because they do not reside at the registered addresses.

• “cage”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “cage”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “cage”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cage”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.

• cega

Inherited from Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

• IPA^(key): /kaʒ/

• Audio:

  (file)

cage f (plural cages)

1. cage

   cage d’escalier ― staircase

2. (soccer, colloquial) area, penalty area

• “cage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• kage, gage

From Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkaːd͡ʒ(ə)/

cage (plural cages)

1. A cage or pen.
2. A cell, enclosure or room of diminutive proportions.
3. A platform or deck.

• English: cage
• Scots: cage

• “cāǧe, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-22.