panopticon

noun

pan·​op·​ti·​con pə-ˈnäp-ti-ˌkän 

pa-

plural panopticons

1

: an optical instrument combining the telescope and microscope

2

: a circular prison built with cells arranged radially so that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners

Examples of panopticon in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Today, the future of work looks increasingly like a digital panopticon. —Sarita Gupta, Time, 2 June 2026

Keith arrests our thinking, and cons us into suppressing our critical faculties with the same kind of internalized surveillance that philosopher Michel Foucault broke down to describe a prison’s use of the panopticon in Discipline and Punish. —Literary Hub, 19 May 2026

These might seem like separate systems, and therefore different from the kind of centralized panopticon imagined in the pulp sci-fi our parents might have read. —Joe Wilkins, Futurism, 29 Apr. 2026

Captive in bucolic panopticons, their lives are at once aesthetically alluring, depressingly regressive and anthropologically fascinating. —Los Angeles Times, 7 Apr. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1742, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for panopticon

• agamemnon
• automaton
• diencephalon
• phenomenon
• aileron
• antiphon
• autobahn
• carillon
• castellan
• celadon
• cephalon
• cynodon