pokey

noun

po·​key ˈpō-kē 

plural pokeys

slang

: jail

Synonyms

• bastille
• big house [slang]
• bridewell
• brig
• calaboose
• can
• clink [slang]
• cooler
• coop
• guardroom
• hock
• hold
• hoosegow
• jail
• jailhouse
• joint [slang]
• jug
• lockup
• nick [British slang]
• pen
• penitentiary
• prison
• quod [British slang]
• slam
• slammer
• stir [slang]
• stockade
• tolbooth [Scottish]

Examples of pokey in a Sentence

joked about the time he passed out on the street and woke up in the pokey

Recent Examples on the Web

Both systems made the GeForce RTX 40 GPUs in the Dell and MSI systems look a little pokey by comparison (though those systems are definitely no slouches, in a bigger-picture sense). —PC Magazine, 12 May 2025

Put the reader on (watch out for the surprisingly pokey earpieces at the ends of the arms), and those displays merge into a single 271 ppi E Ink display. —Anthony Karcz, Forbes.com, 7 May 2025

There are reasons people are afraid of the dentist; all of those pokey instruments going into soft, sensitive places. —Erin Qualey, Vulture, 14 Feb. 2025

Thirty-three years since its founder began cutting up fabrics in a pokey South London flat, the house of McQueen’s headquarters now inhabit a six-story, 30,000-square-foot building in London’s Clerkenwell. —Hayley Maitland, Vogue, 16 Dec. 2024

Word History

Etymology

origin unknown

First Known Use

circa 1919, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing pokey

• the pokey

Rhymes for pokey

• cloche
• gnocchi
• loci
• smokey
• smoky
• karaoke