DCHP-2

penitentiary Penitentiary DCHP-2 (November 2016)

• n. & adj. — Law, Administration

  a prison.

  Originally, a penitentiary was a place one went to "atone for ecclesiastical offences" (see OED-3, s.v. "penitentiary" (n2.1)). Some of the earliest Canadian quotations adhere to this meaning (see, e.g. the 1790 quotation). Currently, a penitentiary in Canada is a federal prison. The differences of usage in the US are minimal and one must go into technicalities of the legal systems and their terms to see a Canadian dimension in the present meaning. COD-2's definition is for a federal prison for persons serving sentences of two or more years. This is technically correct today, but not matched by the use of the average Canadian English speaker. In the US, penitentiary may refer to a state or a federal prison (see DA, s.v. "penitentiary" and W-3, s.v. "penitentiary" (4)), or to a prison generally (see AHD-5, s.v. "penitentiary" (1) which is described as a prison for persons convicted of major crimes; see DAE, s.v. "penitentiary" (1.b)).
  The term penitentiary is most prevalent in several countries other than Canada, including the US (see Chart 1). The present definition is recent; see, for instance, the 1849 quotation, which speaks of provincial penitentiaries, a category not possible according to the current official use of the term.
  See, in contrast, COD-2, s.v. "penitentiary" (1.a), which marks the meaning "Cdn", for which we find little evidence.