cage

From Middle English cage, from Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

• IPA^(key): /keɪdʒ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -eɪdʒ

cage (plural cages)

1. An enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.

   We keep a bird in a cage.

   The tigers are in a cage to protect the public.

   The most dangerous prisoners are locked away in a cage.

   • c. 1596–1599, Shakespeare, William, Henry IV, Part 2, act 4, scene 2, lines 48–49:

     For his father had / never a house but the cage.

   • 1642, Lovelace, Richard, To Althea, from Prison, stanza 4, lines 1–2:

     Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.

2. The passenger compartment of a lift.
3. (field hockey or ice hockey, water polo) The goal.
4. (US, derogatory, slang) An automobile.
5. (figuratively) Something that hinders freedom.
6. (athletics) The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
7. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.
   • 1842, Gwilt, Joseph, “A Glossary of Terms Used by Architects”, in An Encyclopædia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical‎, 2nd edition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, published 1851, page 941:

     Cage, in carpentry, is an outer work of timber inclosing another within it. Thus the cage of a stair is the wooden inclosure that encircles it.

8. (engineering) A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, such as a ball valve.
9. A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
10. (mining) The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
11. (baseball) The catcher's wire mask.
12. (graph theory) A regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.

cage (third-person singular simple present cages, present participle caging, simple past and past participle caged)

1. To confine in a cage; to put into and keep in a cage.
   • 1923, Animal World: An Advocate of Humanity, page 33:

     And the row of human captors, ever leering, They who caged me, Know their power and gloat on my captivity.

   • 2000, Bernard Livingston, Zoo: Animals, People, Places, →ISBN, page 95:

     Laying out the zoo on horseback, he went about making plans to combine his scrubby mesas and canyons with moats, and thereby eliminate caging many large animals—a revolutionary advance in American zoo design.

   • 2010, Gail Damerow, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition, →ISBN:

     The industrial practice of caging commercial laying hens has given caged housing a bad narne.

   • 2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4:

     Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.

   • 2018, Stomu Yamash’ta, ‎Tadashi Yagi, ‎& Stephen Hill, The Kyoto Manifesto for Global Economics, →ISBN:

     By caging chickens, farmers broke the cycle and had to busy themselves with feeding, cleaning and pest control activities.

2. (figuratively) To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
3. To track individual responses to direct mail, either (advertising) to maintain and develop mailing lists or (politics) to identify people who are not eligible to vote because they do not reside at the registered addresses.

• cega

From Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

• IPA^(key): /kaʒ/

• audio

  (file)

cage f (plural cages)

1. cage
2. (soccer, colloquial) area, penalty area

• “cage” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• kage, gage

From Old French cage, from Latin cavea.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkaːdʒ(ə)/

cage (plural cages)

1. A cage or pen.
2. A cell, enclosure or room of diminutive proportions.
3. A platform or deck.

• English: cage
• Scots: cage

• “cāǧe (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-22.