cage

name

1. A surname from French.

noun

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

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.
5. Synonym of automobile.
6. Something that hinders freedom.

   “Schwartz examines with dignity and tenderness the battles within and without of […] families, created and biological, and the cages and freedom they can provide.”

   “My body is a cage / That keeps me from dancing with the one I love / But my mind holds the key”

7. A prison or prison cell.

   “The 'out of the closet' lesbians and gay men here in the Iowa Cages are harassed and discriminated daily by oppressive pigs, believe me, I know, as a lesbian I've experienced it first hand and seen my fellow lesbian and gay friends oppressed to where I'm ready to explode.”

8. The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
9. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.

   “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.”

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, an irregularly-shaped group of cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of sudoku.

verb

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

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

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

   “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.”

2. To imprison.

   “The serial killer was caged for life.”

3. To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
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.