Word.ws English Dictionary

Old Bailey

Old Bailey proper noun: a street in the City between Holborn Circus and St Paul's Cathedral.

old bailey: a street in the City between Holborn Circus and St Paul's Cathedral
Image: Ben Sutherland from Crystal Palace, London, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

the Old Bailey

  1. A street in the City between Holborn Circus and St Paul's Cathedral.
  2. The Central Criminal Court in this street; the Crown Court in the City of London.
  3. (broadly) The English legal system.

Origin of Old Bailey

Originally "The Bailey", a street running outside the western wall of medieval London; from the word bailey, a Middle English term for the outermost wall or court of a fortification. The courthouse built nearby in the 16th century, alongside old Newgate Prison, took its name from the street.

Questions about Old Bailey

What does Old Bailey mean?
Old Bailey means a street in the City between Holborn Circus and St Paul's Cathedral.
What part of speech is Old Bailey?
Old Bailey is a proper noun.

Words near Old Bailey in the dictionary

  1. Old Babylonian
  2. old bachelor
  3. old bachelors
  4. old bag
  5. old bags
  6. Old Bailey
  7. old ball
  8. old balls
  9. old banger
  10. old bangers
  11. Old Bar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Old Bailey (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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