cage

noun

1. An enclosure made of spaced bars, normally to hold animals while providing some ventilation.

   “We keep a bird in a cage.”

   “The tigers are in a cage to protect the public.”

   “The most dangerous prisoners are locked away in a cage.”

   “For his father had / never a house but the cage.”

   “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.”

2. The passenger compartment of a lift.
3. The goal.
4. (abbreviation, alt-of)Short for roll cage, a protective structure around the passenger compartment of a vehicle.
5. (US, broadly, slang)Synonym of automobile.
6. (figuratively)Something that hinders freedom.

   “Schwartz examines with dignity and tenderness the battles within and without of […] families, created and biological, and the cages and freedom they can provide.”

   “My body is a cage / That keeps me from dancing with the one I love / But my mind holds the key”

7. (slang)A prison or prison cell.

   “The 'out of the closet' lesbians and gay men here in the Iowa Cages are harassed and discriminated daily by oppressive pigs, believe me, I know, as a lesbian I've experienced it first hand and seen my fellow lesbian and gay friends oppressed to where I'm ready to explode.”

8. The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
9. An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.

   “Cage, in carpentry, is an outer work of timber inclosing another within it. Thus the cage of a stair is the wooden inclosure that encircles it.”

10. A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, such as a ball valve.
11. A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
12. The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
13. The protective wire mask at the front of a helmet.
14. A regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.
15. In killer sudoku puzzles, an irregularly-shaped group of cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of sudoku.

verb

1. (transitive)To confine in a cage; to put into and keep in a cage.

   “And the row of human captors, ever leering, They who caged me, Know their power and gloat on my captivity.”

   “Laying out the zoo on horseback, he went about making plans to combine his scrubby mesas and canyons with moats, and thereby eliminate caging many large animals—a revolutionary advance in American zoo design.”

   “The industrial practice of caging commercial laying hens has given caged housing a bad narne.”

   “Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.”

   “By caging chickens, farmers broke the cycle and had to busy themselves with feeding, cleaning and pest control activities.”

2. (slang, transitive)To imprison.

   “The serial killer was caged for life.”

3. (figuratively, transitive)To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
4. To immobilize an artificial horizon.

   “To prevent damage to its gimbal mountings during extreme aerobatic maneuvers, the navball should be caged before the start of a display sequence.”

5. To track individual responses to direct mail, either (advertising) to maintain and develop mailing lists or (politics) to identify people who are not eligible to vote because they do not reside at the registered addresses.

name

1. A surname from French.