jailing

Pluraljailings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An instance of someone being sent to jail.

   The judge's decision led to the swift jailing of the fraudster.

   Several jailings followed the riot as the courts worked through the cases.

   Similarimprisonment, incarceration, detention

   Oppositerelease

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun counts. It has a plural, jailings, and each one is a separate event. The plural turns up in catalogues of repression: Kevin Baker, writing in the New York Times in 2009, lists jailings beside clubbings, shootings and blacklistings as the answer to union drives. It sits naturally in news and history writing, where incidents are tallied rather than told one by one.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of jail.

   The new law led to the jailing of dozens of activists.

   Critics argued that jailing nonviolent offenders solved nothing.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs with one spelling. After a form of be it makes the progressive: police are jailing protesters. As a gerund it acts as a noun but keeps its verb habits, taking a direct object with no article: jailing offenders solved nothing. Once it takes the and an of-phrase, as in the jailing of activists, it has moved toward the countable noun.

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