Gaol - What does it mean?
gaol | |
(UK, Ireland, Australia)
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=3
gaol
English
(wikipedia gaol)Noun
(en noun)citation, passage=‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’}}
Usage notes
Gaol'' was the more common spelling between about 1760 and 1830,https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gaol%2Cjail&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15 and is still preferred in proper names in some regions. Most Australian newspapers use (m) rather than ''gaol''''', citing either narrower print width or the possibility of transposing letters in ''gaol'' to produce ''goal''.'''1996 , Sally A. White, ''Reporting in Australia ,page 275