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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

cage.

An enclosure made of spaced bars, normally to hold animals while providing some ventilation.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/keɪd͡ʒ/
  1. An enclosure made of spaced bars, normally to hold animals while providing some ventilation.

    We keep a bird in a cage.
    The tigers are in a cage to protect the public.
  2. The passenger compartment of a lift.

  3. The goal.

  4. Short for roll cage, a protective structure around the passenger compartment of a vehicle.

    abbreviation · alt-of
  5. Synonym of automobile.

    US · broadly · slang
  6. Something that hinders freedom.

    figuratively
  7. A prison or prison cell.

    slang
  8. The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.

  9. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.

  10. A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, such as a ball valve.

  11. A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.

  12. The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.

  13. The protective wire mask at the front of a helmet.

  14. A regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.

  15. In killer sudoku puzzles, a group of connecting cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of sudoku.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English cage, from Old French cage, from Latin cavea. Doublet of cadge and cavea and related to jail.

verb/keɪd͡ʒ/
  1. To confine in a cage; to put into and keep in a cage.

    transitive
  2. To imprison.

    slang · transitive
    The serial killer was caged for life.
  3. To restrict someone's movement or creativity.

    figuratively · transitive
  4. To immobilize an artificial horizon.

    To prevent damage to its gimbal mountings during extreme aerobatic maneuvers, the navball should be caged before the start of a display sequence.
  5. 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.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English cage, from Old French cage, from Latin cavea. Doublet of cadge and cavea and related to jail.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.