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Feb 19, 2024
This week’s themeWords for prisons This week’s words bridewell gulag calaboose panopticon lob's pound 
Illustration: from John Strype’s An Accurate Edition of Stow’s “A Survey of London” (1720) Previous week’s theme Words coined after animals 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargFor his anti-war stance, in 1918 the British government put Bertrand Russell in prison for six months. He wrote about his experience:
I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements,
no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions
to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy... and began the work for The Analysis of
Mind. I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to
me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though
they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence
as was shown by their having been caught.
I hear about writers going to retreats to remove all distractions. Well, this is one way to do it. Do you have any experience with prisons, inside or out? Share below or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Include your location (city, state). Meanwhile, this week we’ll feature five terms for prison from various places and languages that are now used in English. bridewell
PRONUNCIATION:
(BRYD-wel)
MEANING:
noun: A prison.
ETYMOLOGY:
Originally it was a well, named for St. Bride (or Brigid) in London.
The name St. Bride’s Well became Bridewell. Over time, the site has
served as a church, a palace, an orphanage, a hospital, and finally,
gained notoriety as a prison. Earliest documented use: 1583.
NOTES:
Some other terms related to prisons, named after actual places, are: Bastille (from Paris) Newgate (from London) Coventry (from Coventry) USAGE:
“[Jack Straw] made clear that the kind of spare cells in old bridewells
that meant 3,000 prisoners a night could be held in them in the 1980s
no longer existed.” Alan Travis; Send Fewer to Jail; The Guardian (London, UK); Feb 22, 2008. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human
existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. -Carson McCullers,
writer (19 Feb 1917-1967)
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