penitentiary
n. countablen. a prison for people who have committed serious crimes. It is a formal word often used in the United States for large, high-security buildings.
n. a state or federal prison for the confinement of convicted felons. Often implies a facility designed for long-term incarceration and reformatory discipline.
The judge sentenced the man to ten years in a federal penitentiary.
After the high-profile trial, the prisoner was transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary located in a remote part of the state.
The architecture of the nineteenth-century penitentiary was specifically designed to encourage silent reflection and moral reform among the inmates through total isolation.
From Middle English penitentiary, from Medieval Latin pēnitentiārius (“place of penitence”), from Latin paenitentia (“penitence”), term used by the Quakers in Pennsylvania during the 1790s, describing a place for penitents to dwell upon their sins.
Commonly used in North American legal and administrative contexts; less frequent in British English.