Forms: see JAIL sb. [With allusion to a caged bird.] A prisoner in jail; esp. one who has been long, or is often, in jail, a habitual criminal; also, as a term of reproach, an incorrigible rogue.
α. 1618–61. Holyday, Juvenal, 24. Servitia and Ergastala, in Florus, signify Slaves and Gaol-Birds.
1692. Washington, trans. Milton’s Def. Pop., vi. M.’s Wks. (1851), 169. Thou Goal-bird of a Knight,… thou everlasting scandal to thy Native Countrey!
1701. De Foe, True-born Eng., Fine Speech, 124. In Print my Panegyricks fill the Street, And hired Goal-Birds their Huzza’s Repeat.
1860. H. Gouger, 2 Yrs. Impris. in Burmah, xx. 226. We had now become old gaol-birds ourselves.
β. 1603. J. Davies, Microcosmos, etc. Sonn. to Lady Rich (1878), 99/1. It made thee subiect to a Iaile’s controule. But, such a Iaile-bird heauenly Nightingale.
1685. Mischief of Cabals, 21. The bare oaths of a pack of Jayl-birds.
1751. Smollett, Per. Pic., IV. ciii. She bestowed on him the epithets of spendthrift, jailbird and unnatural ruffian.
1883. M. Davitt, in Contemp. Rev., Aug., 172. The one thing most dreaded by the old jail-bird is work requiring bodily exertion.
