[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]
Word:
Hoosegow
Definition: noun
a jail; prison; the slammer.
Origin:
On the bright side, Merriam-Webster finally acknowledges a word as existing. Little miracles.
According to the OED, hoosegow comes from the South American Spanish or Mexican Spanish word juzgao, which, in turn, comes from the Latin judicatum, which means to judge.
How the Americanized hoosegow received its spelling is a matter of the Hobson-Jobson law, which states that languages borrowing a word from another language will modify spelling and pronunciation to adapt to the phonetic behavior of the borrowing language.
Hoosegow gained traction as a word at the turn of the 20th century, finding itself sprinkled in small-time magazines and newspaper articles. Picture James Cagney in The Public Enemy wearing a fedora and telling someone they're a dirty raaaaaat--and he'll kill them once he's out of the hoosegow.
Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definition of hoosegow:
None?
It's the first time anyone's taken UrbanDictionary.com seriously.
Laaaaaame.
Used in a sentence:
1. You dirty raaaaaat. You think you can sing like a stool pigeon to the piggies, n'yeah? N'yeah? You think they can take me down and put me in the hoosegow? N'yeah? Well, I'm not going out like that, y'hear? N'yeah! I'm not going to no hoosegow, n'yeah!
Word Awesomeness Scale (1 to 5):
Five.
Any day you can sound like a 1930's gangster is a good day.
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