Word.ws English Dictionary

jailish

jailish adjective: resembling or characteristic of prison.

Adjective

jailish (comparative more jailish, superlative most jailish)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of prison.
    • March 9 1788, Anna Seward, a letter
      […] the jailish gloom of Venetian blinds […]
    • 751, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
      […] a certain want of decorum, a squalor of sentiment, a sort of jailish cast, contracted in the course of confinement, which disgusted the delicacy of our hero's observation.

Forms of jailish

comparativemore jailish
superlativemost jailish

Origin of jailish

From jail + -ish.

Questions about jailish

What does jailish mean?
Jailish means resembling or characteristic of prison.
What part of speech is jailish?
Jailish is an adjective.

Words near jailish in the dictionary

  1. jailhouse lawyer
  2. jailhouse lawyers
  3. jailhouses
  4. jailing
  5. jailings
  6. jailish
  7. jailkeeper
  8. jailkeepers
  9. jailless
  10. jaillike
  11. jailmate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jailish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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