[polshaw]

There's a confusion here. Gaol is simply a rarely used (I would say archaic) spelling of jail. It does not mean prison.

British English also differentiates jail and prison, by extension I assume that's universal.

[d1sxeyes]

British English as a language might, British people do not, and the physical facilities are the same. We say someone is “held on remand” if they are incarcerated pre-trial, and the part of the prison which holds prisoners pretrial is often referred to as the “remand wing”.

[Andrex]

I feel like I've read, well not a lot, but a pretty decent amount. More than my average peer, probably.

I don't think I've ever once encountered "gaol" before today. Reading the parent comment, I believed it was a non-English language loanword, and probably a recent one at that, until I read the comments.

It's not like I avoid archaic works, either. It's possible I did come across the word at some point, but it was a one-off and without any repetition it faded quickly from my memory.

Am I a one-off?

[theonemind]

I got like 740 on the verbal SAT and I’ve never seen it