I know both words share the same meaning and pronunciation, but I wonder about their comparative usage in modern English.
asked Jan 19, 2013 at 21:55
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1Or as I like to call it, 'the slammer' ;-)– user91124Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:37
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4 Answers
Google Ngram Viewer (for the "British English" corpus) shows that gaol was more popular than jail until the mid-19th century, that the two words were used with broadly similar frequency from then until the mid-20th century, and that now jail is the most common spelling.
However, if you look at the actual citations you'll see that recent uses of gaol are largely in historical contexts (for example, historical studies of gaol records, or reprints of works like The Ballad of Reading Gaol) so that Ngram Viewer underestimates the modern dominance of jail.
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6+1 for making the point that even such recent citations as do exist would mainly be historical references anyway. You'd virtually never rarely see "gaol" in a newspaper today, for example. Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 22:53
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3It's worth adding, that some prisons in Britain and Ireland have "gaol" in their name, and if they are not still in use, are much more likely to be called by that name than re-spelling it to jail. Kilmainham Gaol for example, would almost never be called "Kilmainham Jail". Those in current use are mostly renamed by the British or Irish government though. Reading Gaol, as mentioned in the answer is now HM Prison Reading, while as an Irish example Mountjoy Gaol is now Mountjoy Prison. Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 23:24
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2Actually, for that matter, it's perhaps worth pointing out that the distinction between "prison" and "jail" that exists in the US doesn't in the UK (and nor in Ireland), where the words were once used more of less synonymously, and now prison is the only term used officially. Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 23:34
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1@tchrist I could be wrong of course, but I suspect that's another Fry-ism. People remanded in custody are put in the same places, which officially are called prisons. Jail and gaol are indeed still used in unofficial speech for prisons, and sometimes also for police custody. There's a tendency to use jail more often for remand prisoners, but there's no consensus. Historically, jail/goal was used, but then it definitely included prisons, and sometimes debtors' prison. The above is true for Ireland too, except with the term "garda custody" instead of "police custody". Commented Jan 20, 2013 at 2:23
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1The British National Corpus shows a preference in contemporary British English for jail by nearly 5 to 1. Treat with suspicion anything that Stephen Fry says about language. Better still, ignore it. The OED defines jail/gaol as 'a place or building for the confinement of persons accused or convicted of a crime or offence; a prison.' Commented Jan 20, 2013 at 8:44
I am an official court reporter whose job it is to transcribe court cases from the Crown Court. I always use the word gaol and NEVER jail as Jail is the American spelling and for the life of me I do not see why English has to be corrupted by their spellings.
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2I don't even know how to respond to this, but I love it! Corrupting the language we are, indeed!– MikeCommented Apr 28, 2014 at 19:37
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"Jail" improves on "Gaol", so think of the American spelling as an evolution rather than a corruption. "G" has an ambiguous sound, and "Jail" rhymes with "sail" and "tail".– JonCommented May 16, 2019 at 9:01
It might be interesting to know that the British spelling shows the French origin of the word; gaol is derived from French la geôle. I would not say the American spelling is a corruption, it is a logic simplification of a very difficult spelling and renders the pronunciation. That may be the cause that jail is slowly gaining ground over the historical, but difficult spelling gaol.
British don't really use the word jail, jailed for 20 years can be used in text or news paper but to be sent to jail is a rare thing to say in the UK
