carceral: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for November 10 is:

carceral \KAHR-suh-rul\ adjective
: of, relating to, or suggesting a jail or prison

Example sentence:
When James first glimpsed his new campus, he thought there was something rather carceral about the school?s tall wrought-iron fence.

Did you know?
Describing a painting of John Howard visiting a prison in 1787, writer Robert Hughes reminds us that Howard was "the pioneer of English carceral reform" (_Time Magazine_, November 11, 1985). Huges might have said "prison reform," but what about Vladimir Nabokov, when, in his inimitable prose, he describes a prison scene in _Invitation to a Beheading_: "The door opened, whining, rattling and groaning in keeping with all the rules of carceral counterpoint." Here we find "carceral" not only practical but practically poetical. An adjective borrowed directly from Late Latin, "carceral" appeared shortly after "incarcerate" ("to imprison"), which first showed up in English around the mid-1500s; they're both ultimately from "carcer," Latin for "prison."

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