Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definitions: PANOPTICON |
PANOPTICONNoun1. A room for the exhibition of novelties. 2. A prison so contructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. |
Date "PANOPTICON" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1823. (references) |
Etymology: Panopticon \Pa*nop"ti*con\, noun. [New Latin expression. See Pan-, and Optic.]. (Websters 1913) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Prison | Noun: prison, prison house; jail, gaol, cage, coop, den, cell; stronghold, fortress, keep, donjon, dungeon, Bastille, oubliette, bridewell, house of correction, hulks, tollbooth, panopticon, penitentiary, guardroom, lockup, hold; round house, watch house, station house, sponging house; station; house of detention, black hole, pen, fold, pound; inclosure; isolation (exclusion); penal settlement, penal colony; bilboes, stocks, limbo, quod; calaboose, chauki, choky, thana; workhouse. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The architectural figure "incorporates a tower central to an annular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows. The occupants of the cells . . . are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Toward this end, Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also mazelike connections among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray the presence of an observer."[1]
Bentham derived the idea from the plan of a factory designed for easy supervision, and his design was intended to be cheaper than that of the prisons of his time, as it required less staff. As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched.
While the design had limited (if any) effect on the prisons of Bentham's time, it has been seen as an important development. For instance, the design was seen by Michel Foucault (in "Discipline and Punish") as an example of a new technology of observation which transcended to the army, the school and the factory. Variants of the panopticon can also be seen in the modern society as part of the surveillance society.
See also: The Transparent Society, Information Awareness Office
[1] Barton, Ben F., and Marthalee S. Barton. "Modes of Power in Technical and Professional Visuals." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 7.1, 1993. 138-62.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Panopticon."
Crosswords: PANOPTICON |
| Non-English Usage: "PANOPTICON" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Swedish (panopticon). |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "PANOPTICON" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 93.55% of the time. "PANOPTICON" is used about 31 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 93.55% | 29 | 64,444 |
| Noun (proper) | 6.45% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 31 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
panopticon | 33 |
foucault panopticon | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "PANOPTICON"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Hungarian | panoptikum (waxworks). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | anopticonpay.(various references) | |
Romanian | panoptic (panoptic, waxwork), închisoare rotundã. (various references) | |
Russian | паноптикум (waxworks). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | panoptikum. (various references) | |
Swedish | panopticon. (various references) | |
Turkish | hücreleri gardiyana baklan dairevi hapishane. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Words rhyming with "PANOPTICON" (pronounced 'Pa*nop"ti*con'): Archdeacon, Bacon, Balcon, Barcon, Basilicon, Buscon, Catholicon, Diacatholicon, Ekasilicon, Estramacon, Etymologicon, Euphonicon, Falcon, Faulcon, Flacon, Gascon, Gentile-falcon, gyrfalcon, Harmonicon, helicon, Hydraulicon, Idioticon, Irenicon, Kamptulicon, lexicon, Monasticon, Onomasticon, Panpharmacon, Pantechnicon, Parelcon, Pharmacon, Rincon, Rubicon, Salpicon, Sciopticon, silicon, Stereopticon, Subdeacon, Synonymicon, Tyrotoxicon, Zircon. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-i-n-n-o-o-p-p-t" | |
-2 letters: conation, panoptic. | |
-3 letters: actinon, appoint, caption, contain, paction, pintano. | |
-4 letters: action, anoint, atonic, atopic, cannot, canton, cation, catnip, incant, nation, notion, octopi, option, ponton, potion, tannic. | |
-5 letters: actin, ancon, anion, antic, canon, canto, capon, coapt, coati, conin, conto, coopt, cotan, inapt, niton, octan, onion, ontic, optic, paint, panic, panto, patin, patio, piano, picot, pinna, pinon, pinot, pinta, pinto, piton, point, tonic, topic, topoi. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-c-i-n-n-o-o-p-p-t" | |
+5 letters: nonphotographic, phytoplanktonic. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)50 41 4E 4F 50 54 49 43 4F 4E |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).--. .- -. --- .--. - .. -.-. --- -. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010000 01000001 01001110 01001111 01010000 01010100 01001001 01000011 01001111 01001110 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)P A N O P T I C O N |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0050 0041 004E 004F 0050 0054 0049 0043 004F 004E |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)50354849505443374948 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Usage Frequency | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Translations: Modern 7. Rhymes 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
