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CONFINEMENT
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of restraining of a person's liberty by confining them
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("confinement" is a kind of...):
restraint (the act of controlling by restraining someone or something)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "confinement"):
imprisonment; internment (the act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a prison))
house arrest (confinement to your own home)
commitment; committal; consignment (the official act of consigning a person to confinement (as in a prison or mental hospital))
Derivation:
confine (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The act of keeping something within specified bounds (by force if necessary)
Example:
the restriction of the infection to a focal area
Synonyms:
confinement; restriction
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("confinement" is a kind of...):
restraint (the act of controlling by restraining someone or something)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "confinement"):
classification (restriction imposed by the government on documents or weapons that are available only to certain authorized people)
specification; stipulation (a restriction that is insisted upon as a condition for an agreement)
circumscription (the act of circumscribing)
constraint (the act of constraining; the threat or use of force to control the thoughts or behavior of others)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The state of being confined
Example:
he was held in confinement
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("confinement" is a kind of...):
subjection; subjugation (forced submission to control by others)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "confinement"):
constraint; restraint (the state of being physically constrained)
captivity; immurement; imprisonment; incarceration (the state of being imprisoned)
custody; detainment; detention; hold (a state of being confined (usually for a short time))
solitary; solitary confinement (confinement of a prisoner in isolation from other prisoners)
Derivation:
confine (close in)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Concluding state of pregnancy; from the onset of contractions to the birth of a child
Example:
she was in labor for six hours
Synonyms:
childbed; confinement; labor; labour; lying-in; parturiency; travail
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("confinement" is a kind of...):
birth; birthing; giving birth; parturition (the process of giving birth)
Meronyms (parts of "confinement"):
uterine contraction (a rhythmic tightening in labor of the upper uterine musculature that contracts the size of the uterus and pushes the fetus toward the birth canal)
effacement (shortening of the uterine cervix and thinning of its walls as it is dilated during labor)
asynclitism; obliquity (the presentation during labor of the head of the fetus at an abnormal angle)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "confinement"):
premature labor; premature labour (labor beginning prior to the 37th week of gestation)
Holonyms ("confinement" is a part of...):
gestation; maternity; pregnancy (the state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth when a woman carries a developing fetus in her uterus)
Context examples:
To be sitting long after dinner, was a confinement that he could not endure.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I found them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners—so that no one man in confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her as not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman's confinement—might have been within a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which yet bore the traces of monastic division?
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Colonel Wallis had been so impatient to be introduced to them! and Mr Elliot so anxious that he should! and there was a Mrs Wallis, at present known only to them by description, as she was in daily expectation of her confinement; but Mr Elliot spoke of her as a most charming woman, quite worthy of being known in Camden Place, and as soon as she recovered they were to be acquainted.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
This left Jo to her own devices, for Mrs. March had taken her place as nurse, and bade her rest, exercise, and amuse herself after her long confinement.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
They reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
On the commission he is, at any rate, said I. And he writes to me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents—which, you know, is by solitary confinement.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to be losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and noise, to have confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty, freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse: but even these incitements to regret were feeble, compared with what arose from the conviction of being missed by her best friends, and the longing to be useful to those who were wanting her!
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
