cage

Etymology

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

noun

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.
   Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage. 1642, Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison, stanza 4, lines 1–2
2. The passenger compartment of a lift.
3. (field hockey or ice hockey, water polo) The goal.
4. (US, derogatory, slang) An automobile.
5. (figurative) Something that hinders freedom.
   My body is a cage / That keeps me from dancing with the one I love / But my mind holds the key 2007, Jeremy Gara, Régine Chassagne (lyrics and music), “My Body Is a Cage”, in Neon Bible, performed by Arcade Fire
6. (athletics) The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
7. 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. 1842, Joseph Gwilt, “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
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.
13. 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

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. 1923, Animal World: An Advocate of Humanity, page 33
   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. 2000, Bernard Livingston, Zoo: Animals, People, Places, page 95
   The industrial practice of caging commercial laying hens has given caged housing a bad narne. 2010, Gail Damerow, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition
   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. 2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4
   By caging chickens, farmers broke the cycle and had to busy themselves with feeding, cleaning and pest control activities. 2018, Stomu Yamash’ta, Tadashi Yagi, Stephen Hill, The Kyoto Manifesto for Global Economics
2. (figurative) To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
3. (aviation) 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.
4. 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.