bail
Pluralbails
Pluralbails
- 1Money or other security given to a court in exchange for an arrested person's release, guaranteeing they will appear for trial.
The court granted bail after the defense argued she posed no flight risk.
Prosecutors asked the judge to deny bail given the seriousness of the charges.
Note
A word that began with handing over: Old French bailler meant "to deliver or hand over," and behind it stands Latin baiulus, a porter or steward, which also gives English bailiff. Here bail is the security itself, so it takes money verbs. A court sets, grants or denies bail, and a defendant who cannot raise the sum is unable to make bail and stays in jail. The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution forbids excessive bail.
- 2To obtain an arrested person's release by paying the security a court requires.
A bondsman agreed to bail the defendant for a ten percent fee.
Friends pooled their savings to bail him before the hearing.
- 3To leave or exit somewhere abruptly, often without explanation.
Halfway through the meeting, she just bailed without a word.
If things get awkward, I usually bail early.
Similarsplit, bolt, leave, scram
Oppositestay
Note
A clipping of bail out, and it still carries the sense of jumping clear: a pilot whose engine is in flames has no choice but to bail. It stretches easily to abandoning a plan. Jeannette Cooperman's 2010 piece in St. Louis magazine describes schools that tried a teacher home-visit program and bailed. Keep it to casual speech and writing; it is slang.
- 4To fail to follow through on a commitment to someone, especially by backing out at the last moment.
He bailed on the group project and left everyone scrambling.
I hate to bail, but something urgent has come up.
Note
The same clipped verb as the slang of abrupt leaving, but aimed at a person: you bail on someone. The on makes it personal. In Robert Draper's Hadrian's Walls (1999), a colleague "bails on me, scrambles over to Finance." Without on it can still mean backing out ("I hate to bail"), but then the person let down goes unnamed.
- 5To remove water from a boat by scooping it out with a container.
She grabbed a bucket and began to bail water from the flooded dinghy.
They bailed frantically as waves crashed over the side.
Similarscoop
Note
The water is the object here: you bail water out of a boat. The verb can also stand alone, as when Rider Haggard's crew in She "bailed away for dear life" with a tin bowl. Out is its constant companion, and "Bail out! bail out!" is the cry in that same scene. Compare bailing the boat itself, where the vessel takes the object slot.
- 6To clear a boat of the water that has collected inside it by scooping it out.
They bailed the dinghy as quickly as they could.
You'll need to bail the boat before we can set off again.
Note
Here the boat is the object: you bail a boat, or bail her out, with the pronoun tucked between verb and particle. Richard Henry Dana Jr. does exactly that in Two Years Before the Mast (1840): "By the help of a small bucket and our hats we bailed her out." In bail out alone, only the object shows whether water or vessel is meant.
- 7Release from custody granted once the required security payment has been made to the court.
The defendant was released on bail pending his court appearance.
After a brief hearing, the magistrate granted bail.
Note
In British legal usage the word names the release rather than the money. A defendant is out on bail, and a magistrate who grants bail is deciding about liberty, not naming a price. The preposition is the reader's clue: on bail points here, while bail for a stated sum points back to the security itself.
- 8A bucket or scoop used for removing water from a boat or similar vessel.
She reached for the bail to clear the rising water from the hull.
Every dinghy should carry a bail tied to a thwart.
Similarscoop
Note
Any vessel that scoops will serve. James Cook's Voyages Round the World (1770) describes the bail of a canoe made of a human skull. The noun is the tool behind the verb of scooping water. It shares its spelling, though not its origin, with the hoop-shaped handle of a bucket, which is a separate word entirely.
- 9Either of the two small wooden bars laid across the tops of the stumps to complete a wicket in cricket.
The bowler clipped the off stump and sent a bail spinning.
In high winds the umpires removed the bails to keep play fair.
Note
Cricket mostly speaks of bails in the plural, because there are two and the decisive act is knocking them off. Removing them puts out a batter who is short of the crease. Stephan Shemilt's report of England's 2019 Cricket World Cup win turns on that moment: a diving Guptill was short "when Buttler removed the bails," and Lord's erupted.
- 10The person who provides the security that secures an arrested person's release.
Her employer agreed to act as bail at the hearing.
Without anyone willing to be his bail, he remained in custody.
Note
British legal usage lets a person be bail, which turns the word from a thing into a role. It usually sits after a verb: someone acts as bail, or agrees to be a defendant's bail. Read it with care, because his bail can mean the money, the release, or the friend who answered for him.
- 11To set free, release, or deliver someone from confinement or constraint.
The decree empowered the governor to bail any prisoner he saw fit.
She prayed that someone would come to bail the captives.
Similarfree, release, deliver, liberate
Note
Spenser pairs it with rescue in The Faerie Queene (1596): "Ne none there was to reskue her, ne none to baile." In that company the word means deliverance in general, with no court or payment involved. That makes it a wider release than the legal verb, which always needs a sum and a judge.
- 12To release an arrested person from custody under the guarantee that they will appear for trial.
The magistrate decided to bail the defendant pending further inquiries.
He was bailed by the court after his lawyer's argument.
Note
Courtroom usage puts the authority in the subject position: a magistrate or court bails the accused, and the accused is bailed. That makes it the mirror image of paying for someone's release, where a friend or bondsman is the one who bails. In the passive the two look identical. In "he was bailed," only the context tells you who acted.
- 13A hoop, ring, or curved handle, especially the semicircular one fitted to a bucket or kettle.
He hooked a finger under the bail and swung the pail onto the bench.
A loose rivet let the bail come away from the bucket.
Note
A different word from the courtroom bail: Middle English beyle, from Old English bīeġels. It covers any swinging loop that takes a load, not only a bucket's. In John M. Findley's Just Lucky (2010), a metal bail on each end of a strap holds a milking machine under a cow's belly. The same Old English word lies behind the cattle, cricket and jewelry senses of bail.
- 14To hand over personal property to another person to be held temporarily under a bailment.
The merchant chose to bail his goods to a trusted agent during the voyage.
Farmers often bail equipment to neighbors when storage runs short.
Similarentrust, consign, deposit
Note
The verb of bailment, the law of goods left in someone else's hands. It takes the property as its object and the holder after to: one bails cloth to a tailor to be made into a garment, or goods to a carrier. Only possession moves, and only for a while. The Old French sense "to deliver or hand over" is still close to the surface here.
- 15A normally curved handle suspended between two sockets, used as a drawer pull and also found on kettles or pails.
He polished the tarnished bail before reattaching it to the cabinet.
Each drawer pull was a simple curved bail that swung freely in its sockets.
Note
In furniture, this is the swinging pull on a drawer front: a curved bar held at each end in a socket, so it pivots when gripped. Kettles and pails carry the same fitting, which links it to the general hoop sense. This bail is unrelated to the courtroom one. It comes from Old English bīeġels, not from the Old French that gave the legal word.
- 16A hoop, ring, or other small fitting used to connect a pendant to a necklace.
The jeweler soldered a new bail onto the back of the stone setting.
A decorative bail can frame the top of a pendant as much as hold it.
- 17A hinged bar used as a restraint for an animal, or the corresponding paper-holding bar on a typewriter.
A sturdy bail held the heifer steady while the vet examined her.
The typewriter's bail pressed the page flat against the roller.
- 18A stall for a cow or other animal, usually one where the animal is tethered with a semicircular hoop.
The dairy hand led each cow into a separate bail.
A wooden bail held the heifer while the farmer checked her hooves.
Similarstall
Note
Farm writing counts bails the way a factory counts stations. Edith Whetham and Joan Thirsk's Agrarian History of England and Wales records ten men milking three hundred cows in five bails, instead of the thirty men normally needed. The number of bails measures how many cows can be handled at once, which is why the word appears in discussions of labor and milking efficiency.
- 19A frame used to hold a cow in place during milking or feeding.
Modern dairies fit each bail with padded sides for comfort.
The farmer closed the bail around the cow's neck so she would stand still.
Note
A word of the milking shed, chiefly Australian and New Zealand. In Bob Ellis's Hush Now, Don't Cry (2011), unmilked cows are driven into the bail one at a time, and the milker moves "from one bail to the other" to take the next. The frame works as a station, and a shed may have several, each holding one cow while she is milked and released.
- 20To detain a traveler in order to rob them, to corner a wild animal, or more loosely to hold someone up.
The bushrangers would bail any coach that passed through the gorge.
Their dogs bailed the boar against a fallen log until help came.
Note
Almost always followed by up, and in Australian and New Zealand use it stretches from robbery and the hunt to everyday buttonholing. Clive James, in North Face of Soho (2006), has a character bailed up by "a particularly hostile spiritual presence speaking Swedish." In Clem Bastow's 2023 account, a Scot bails her up outside a pub over a crossword. To bail someone up is, loosely, to corner them.
- 21To secure a cow by placing its head in a bail so that it can be milked.
Dairy workers bail the cows one by one each morning.
She bailed the restless heifer before attaching the cups.
Note
The verb belongs with the milking frame: to bail a cow is to put her head into it so she stands still for milking. It is part of the same Australian and New Zealand dairy vocabulary. It takes the whole cow as its object, since you bail the cow rather than her head.
- 22To hold the head of a cow steady during milking.
Experienced hands can bail a cow's head in seconds.
She bailed the restless cow's head before milking.
- 23A person who scoops water out of a boat to keep it from sinking.
As bail, he scooped water nonstop while the others rowed.
The fishing crew relied on a steady bail to keep them afloat.
- 24
- 25Custody or safekeeping of a person or thing.
Silly Faunus now within their baile.
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
Spenser can still use it in The Faerie Queene (1590): "Silly Faunus now within their baile." To be within someone's bail is to be in their keeping. The sense is obsolete, so modern readers meet it only in older verse. Outside historical writing, custody or keeping says the same thing without confusing it with the courtroom senses.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English baille, from the Old French verb bailler ("to deliver or hand over") and noun bail ("lease"), going back to Latin bāiulāre ("to carry or bear") and baiulus ("porter; steward").
From a shortening of "bail out," ultimately the same origin as the sense above.
From Middle English beyle, from Old English bīeġels, made from bīeġan combined with the suffix -els.
From French baillier.