as in prisoner
a person convicted as a criminal and serving a prison sentence had spent most of his sorry life as a jailbird in hoosegows across the South

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of jailbird Well, Conan Harris is an ex-con, a jailbird. Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 22 Aug. 2025 Her jumpsuit is a couture twist on the cartoonish striped getup of a jailbird. Jemal Polson, CNN Money, 8 May 2025 Becomes a jailbird at a high-security zoo after he’s caught, with the newest Wallace & Gromit film, Vengeance Most Fowl, finding Feathers, all these years later, hell-bent on getting even with the duo who locked him up. Devon Ivie, Vulture, 6 Jan. 2025 Twenty years later, an actress named Selma Vaz Dias, who wanted to dramatize Good Morning, Midnight on the radio, found her living in poverty and obscurity in the English countryside with a third husband who also ended an embezzler and a jailbird. Vivian Gornick, The New Republic, 6 Jan. 2023 The jailbird and guard stayed in touch over the phone, according to Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton. Michael Ruiz, Fox News, 11 May 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for jailbird
Noun
  • Every trip to the electric chair is horrifying; a sequence where an intentionally botched execution ignites a still-living prisoner's screaming head in ghoulish blue flames is up there with any supernatural fright King's ever conceived.
    James Grebey, Time, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Belarus' state news agency Belta said the prisoners freed on Thursday included 14 foreign nationals from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, France, Britain and Germany.
    Andrius Sytas, USA Today, 11 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • Except for nearly the 133,000 inmates and their families and loved ones none of these places have been obscured.
    Manuel Muñoz, Literary Hub, 11 Sep. 2025
  • An Arizona inmate tricked court officials into releasing him more than two decades early by filing fake orders allegedly dismissing his charges.
    Suzanne Nuyen, NPR, 10 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • Star actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson who plays the charismatic chef and ex-convict trying to rebuild his life and reputation, will attend the Spanish event, next to co-writers and producers Jónas Margeir Ingólfsson and Hörður Rúnarsson of Act4.
    Annika Pham, Variety, 9 Sep. 2025
  • In other states across the country, convicts were funnelled into a range of different facilities, but in Aragua the system was more centralized, and the main prison was Tocorón.
    Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • Those logical advantages for the pros column can outweigh some of those in the cons column, such as the perception of new sources of stress.
    Elizabeth Baskin, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Tatum does stretch his acting abilities in scenes where Jeffrey’s con-man charisma is underlaid with desperation and deception, but there’s nothing in Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn’s screenplay to seriously challenge Tatum’s persona as a leading man.
    Katie Rife, IndieWire, 6 Sep. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Jailbird.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/jailbird. Accessed 15 Sep. 2025.

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