| > Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of jail It's odd that it doesn't mention it as archaic, because it's provably Just Not Used in the real world [0], but it's also an American dictionary, so all bets are off > https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol If you click on the entry your search results give, it takes you to the entry for jail (eg: jail is the canonical noun it's using). Jail and gaol have slightly different routes into English, with gaol being via Northern French. Sez the OED: > "remains as a written form in the archaic spelling gaol (chiefly due to statutory and official tradition); but this is obsolete in the spoken language, where the surviving word is jail, repr. Old Parisian French and Middle English jaiole, jaile. Hence though both forms gaol, jail, are still written, only the latter is spoken. In U.S. jail is the official spelling." Finally, though, "jail" as a noun is pretty infrequent compared to "prison", which are the same thing in the UK (unlike the US), but the latter is much more common. The verb form on the other hand is almost always "jail", so when you are "jailed", you're sent to a prison. 0: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/100681/which-wor... |