jail
/d͡ʒeɪl/
"jail" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“jail” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,392 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,392
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A place or institution for the confinement of persons held against their will in lawful custody or detention, especially (in US usage) a place where people are held for minor offenses or with refer...
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | jail |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /d͡ʒeɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,392 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “jail” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for jail is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /d͡ʒeɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,392 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for jail, with forms such as "ajil", "jaill", and "jali". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "JI", "Jim", "Jan", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English gayole, gaylle, gaille, gayle, gaile, from Old French gaiole, gayolle, gaole, from Medieval Latin gabiola, from Late Latin caveola (“small cage, cell”), a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”). Doublet of caveola and related t… The correct English form is jail, spelled J-A-I-L.
Definition
- 1A place or institution for the confinement of persons held against their will in lawful custody or detention, especially (in US usage) a place where people are held for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
- 2Confinement in a jail.
- 3The condition created by the requirement that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for some period of time (usually 30 days).
- 4In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
- 5A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.
Etymology
From Middle English gayole, gaylle, gaille, gayle, gaile, from Old French gaiole, gayolle, gaole, from Medieval Latin gabiola, from Late Latin caveola (“small cage, cell”), a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”). Doublet of caveola and related to cage. More at cajole. Fully displaced native Middle English quartern (“prison, jail, cell”), from Old English cweartern (“jail, prison”). Partially displaced native Middle English lok, from Old English loc (“enclosure, pen; jail, prison”), whence lock; and Middle English carcern, from Old English carcern, from Latin carcer (“prison, jail”). Compare these Old English words, all meaning “jail”: heaþor, heolstorloca (means also “jail cell”), clūstorloc, dung (also “dungeon”), hlinræced, nirwþ, nīedcleofa, hearmloca, and nearu.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ajil,jaill,jali,jial,jjail
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of jail - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “jail”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is J-A-I-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /d͡ʒeɪl/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “JI” - see the side-by-side comparison. jail vs JI
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.