Syllable division derived from spelling — this word is not in the pronouncing dictionary, so no phonetic transcription is shown rather than a guessed one.
borstal is a noun meaning "formerly a British reform school for youths considered too young to send to prison". It carries one recorded sense.
formerly a British reform school for youths considered too young to send to prison
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for borstal come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.