Pokey Means Jail

Andres from San Diego, California, wonders: Why do we refer to jail as the pokey? The term, along with its variant pogie or pogey, likely goes back to a word for workhouse, a prison where people worked as part of their sentence, much like debtors’ prison. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Dump Truck Badonkadonk

Jennifer teaches yoga on the beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and she and her students have been collecting synonyms for derrière, such as dump truck, rear end, and badonkadonk. The last of these has been around for at least 25 years, and was...

Recent posts