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Feb 20, 2024
This week’s theme
Words for prisons

This week’s words
bridewell
gulag
calaboose
panopticon
lob's pound

gulag
Photo: Museum of Occupation of Latvia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

gulag

PRONUNCIATION:
(GOO-lahg)

MEANING:
noun:
1. The system of forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union.
2. Any prison or forced labor camp, especially one for political prisoners.
3. A place of great hardship.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Russian Gulag, acronym from Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh LAGerei (Chief Administration for Corrective Labor Camps). Earliest documented use: 1946.

USAGE:
“Eritrea is ruled by a despot-for-life whose critics wind up dead or sweating in a gulag of shipping crates in the desert.”
How to Make Eritrea Less Horrible; The Economist (London, UK); Aug 4, 2018.

See more usage examples of gulag in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. -Ansel Adams, photographer (20 Feb 1902-1984)

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