Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A structure for confining birds or animals, enclosed on at least one side by a grating of wires or bars that lets in air and light.
  • noun A barred room or fenced enclosure for confining prisoners.
  • noun An enclosing openwork structure.
  • noun A skeletal support, as for a building; a framework.
  • noun An elevator car.
  • noun Baseball A batting cage.
  • noun Sports A goal, as in hockey or soccer, made of a net attached to a frame.
  • transitive verb To put or confine in or as if in a cage. synonym: enclose.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To confine in a cage; shut up or confine: as, “caged nightingales,”
  • To make like a cage or place of confinement: as, “the caged cloister,”
  • noun A drum or cylinder in a cotton-scutching machine, covered with wire netting, against which the cotton is thrown in the form of a sheet, the dust being removed by a suction-fan.
  • noun In base-ball, the mask worn by the catcher.
  • noun A box-like receptacle or inclosure for confining birds or wild beasts, made with open spaces on one or more sides, or on all sides, and often also at the top, by the use of osiers, wires, slats, or rods or bars of iron, according to the required strength.
  • noun A prison or place of confinement for malefactors; a part of a building or of a room separated from the rest by bars, within which to confine persons under arrest, as sick or wounded prisoners in a hospital.
  • noun A skeleton framework of any kind.
  • noun A cup with a glass bottom and cover between which is a drop of water containing animalcules to be examined under a microscope.
  • noun The large wheel of a whim about which the hoisting-rope is wound.
  • noun A name sometimes given to a chapel inclosed with a latticework or grating.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A box or inclosure, wholly or partly of openwork, in wood or metal, used for confining birds or other animals.
  • noun A place of confinement for malefactors.
  • noun (Carp.) An outer framework of timber, inclosing something within it.
  • noun A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, as a ball valve.
  • noun A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
  • noun The box, bucket, or inclosed platform of a lift or elevator; a cagelike structure moving in a shaft.
  • noun (Mining) The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
  • noun (Baseball) The catcher's wire mask.
  • intransitive verb To confine in, or as in, a cage; to shut up or confine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.
  • noun the passenger compartment of a lift
  • verb to put into a cage
  • verb to keep in a cage
  • verb advertising, politics To track individual responses to direct mail.
  • verb figuratively to restrict someone's movement or creativity

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun something that restricts freedom as a cage restricts movement
  • verb confine in a cage
  • noun the net that is the goal in ice hockey
  • noun a movable screen placed behind home base to catch balls during batting practice
  • noun an enclosure made or wire or metal bars in which birds or animals can be kept
  • noun United States composer of avant-garde music (1912-1992)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cavea.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French cage, from Latin cavea

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Examples

  • She observed that the pair which he then saw building their nest in her cage, were a male and female, who had been hatched and reared in that very _cage_, and were not in existence when the mossy cradle was fabricated in which _they_ first saw light. "

    Evolution, Old & New Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, as compared with that of Charles Darwin Samuel Butler 1868

  • For one, the egg industry and others had demonstrated the power of the label cage free, yet Hudson Valley had done nothing to get the word out that its ducks were not in cages.

    The Foie Gras Wars Mark Caro 2009

  • For one, the egg industry and others had demonstrated the power of the label cage free, yet Hudson Valley had done nothing to get the word out that its ducks were not in cages.

    The Foie Gras Wars Mark Caro 2009

  • Marécage is French for swamp, so the title translates as The flower of the swamp, a head.

    13 « June « 2008 « Jahsonic 2008

  • Marécage is French for swamp, so the title translates as The flower of the swamp, a head.

    The flower of the swamp, a head. Human and sad. « Jahsonic 2008

  • Then about 9: 30 or so, I go up to what I call the cage, which is where I write.

    The Fifties 1993

  • Can you share some popcorn and a drink, this cage is a little confining to me?

    The Tail Section » LOST - Are the others Scientologists? 2007

  • Although I think the cage is the three square miles around 76th and Broadway, and the problem is too much food (if not actually Barney Greengrass eastern Gaspé smoked salmon).

    Rhymes With Rich 2006

  • Although I think the cage is the three square miles around 76th and Broadway, and the problem is too much food (if not actually Barney Greengrass eastern Gaspé smoked salmon).

    Rhymes With Rich 2006

  • Worst: Vince trying to lure hardcore NFL fans to WWE with a title cage match first.

    PWTorch.com 2008

Comments

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  • in cycling, a cage is a water bottle holder

    January 12, 2013