cage

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A structure for confining birds or animals, enclosed on at least one side by a grating of wires or bars that lets in air and light.
2. n. A barred room or fenced enclosure for confining prisoners.
3. n. An enclosing openwork structure: placed a protective cage over the sapling; a bank teller's cage.
4. n. A skeletal support, as for a building; a framework.
5. n. An elevator car.
6. n. Baseball A large wire screen placed behind home plate to stop balls in batting practice.
7. n. Sports A goal, as in hockey or soccer, made of a net attached to a frame .
8. v. To put or confine in or as if in a cage. See Synonyms at enclose.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A box-like receptacle or inclosure for confining birds or wild beasts, made with open spaces on one or more sides, or on all sides, and often also at the top, by the use of osiers, wires, slats, or rods or bars of iron, according to the required strength.
2. n. A prison or place of confinement for malefactors; a part of a building or of a room separated from the rest by bars, within which to confine persons under arrest, as sick or wounded prisoners in a hospital.
3. n. A skeleton framework of any kind. In carpentry, an outer work of timber inclosing another within it, as the cage of a windmill or of a staircase.
4. n. A cup with a glass bottom and cover between which is a drop of water containing animalcules to be examined under a microscope.
5. n. The large wheel of a whim about which the hoisting-rope is wound.
6. n. A name sometimes given to a chapel inclosed with a latticework or grating.
7. To confine in a cage; shut up or confine: as, “caged nightingales,”
8. To make like a cage or place of confinement: as, “the caged cloister,”
9. n. A drum or cylinder in a cotton-scutching machine, covered with wire netting, against which the cotton is thrown in the form of sheet, the dust being removed by a suction-fan.
10. n. In base-ball, the mask worn by the catcher.

Wiktionary

1. n. an enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.
2. n. the passenger compartment of a lift
3. v. to put into a cage
4. v. to keep in a cage
5. v. advertising, politics To track individual responses to direct mail.
6. v. figuratively to restrict someone's movement or creativity

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A box or inclosure, wholly or partly of openwork, in wood or metal, used for confining birds or other animals.
2. n. A place of confinement for malefactors.
3. n. (Carp.) An outer framework of timber, inclosing something within it.
4. n. A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, as a ball valve.
5. n. A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
6. n. The box, bucket, or inclosed platform of lift or elevator; a cagelike structure moving in a shaft.
7. n. (Mining) The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
8. n. (Baseball) The catcher's wire mask.
9. v. To confine in, or as in, a cage; to shut up or confine.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. something that restricts freedom as a cage restricts movement
2. v. confine in a cage
3. n. the net that is the goal in ice hockey
4. n. a movable screen placed behind home base to catch balls during batting practice
5. n. an enclosure made or wire or metal bars in which birds or animals can be kept
6. n. United States composer of avant-garde music (1912-1992)