cage

English Online Dictionary. What means cage‎? What does cage mean?

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /keɪd͡ʒ/
• Rhymes: -eɪdʒ

Noun

cage (plural cages)

1. An enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.
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.
6. (slang) A prison or prison cell.
7. (athletics) The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
8. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within 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.

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Zulu: ikheji

Translations

Verb

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.
2. (transitive, slang) To imprison.

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

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.

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• “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.

Anagrams

• cega

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaʒ/

Noun

cage f (plural cages)

1. cage

   cage d’escalier ― staircase

2. (soccer, colloquial) area, penalty area

Derived terms

Further reading

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

Middle English

Alternative forms

• kage, gage

Etymology

From Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkaːd͡ʒ(ə)/

Noun

cage (plural cages)

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

Descendants

• English: cage
• Scots: cage

References

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