jail [ME] The words jail and cage [ME] both go back to Latin caveloa ‘little cage’ from cavea ‘hollow, cave, cell’, from cavus ‘hollow’, the source of *cave. With the c changed to a hard g, the word arrived in medieval English from Anglo-Norman gaole, but it was also borrowed from Old French jaiole with the g softened to a j. The Anglo-Norman form survives in the old-fashioned British spelling gaol.