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Feb 22, 2024
This week’s theme
Words for prisons

This week’s words
bridewell
gulag
calaboose
panopticon
lob's pound

panopticon
Presidio Modelo (Model Prison) in Cuba, modeled as a panopticon. Not in use.
Photo: Friman / Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

panopticon

PRONUNCIATION:
(pan-OP-ti-kon, puh-NAHP-ti-kahn)

MEANING:
noun:
1. A circular prison with a watchtower in the center so that any inmate can be observed from a single point.
2. A place marked by constant surveillance.

ETYMOLOGY:
The design of such a prison was proposed by the utilitarian and philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1787. From Greek pan (all) + optikon (sight, seeing). Earliest documented use: 1787.

USAGE:
“And the radical circular plan has yielded a kind of benevolent parental panopticon, allowing the couple to see whose rooms are lit and determine whether their independent teenagers are home for the night.”
Sam Cochran; Gear Shift; Architectural Digest (Los Angeles, California); Jan 2023.

See more usage examples of panopticon in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (22 Feb 1788-1860)

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