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CUSTODY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(with 'in') guardianship over; in divorce cases it is the right to house and care for and discipline a child
Example:
the mother was awarded custody of the children
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("custody" is a kind of...):
guardianship; keeping; safekeeping (the responsibility of a guardian or keeper)
Derivation:
custodial (providing protective supervision; watching over or safeguarding)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Holding by the police
Example:
the suspect is in custody
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("custody" is a kind of...):
imprisonment; internment (the act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a prison))
Sense 3
Meaning:
A state of being confined (usually for a short time)
Example:
he is in the custody of police
Synonyms:
custody; detainment; detention; hold
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("custody" is a kind of...):
confinement (the state of being confined)
Context examples:
And another thousand to the man who will name the person or persons who keep him in custody?
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison?
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In other words, Lord Avon, I make myself responsible, as the representative of the law, that you are held in safe custody until your person may be required of me.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He made a sweeping bow to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax's account of the curtain conflagration during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed from her master's service.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I see him now, going away in custody, despised by the congregation.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
And she was afterwards seen walking into Hyde Park in company with Flora Millar, a woman who is now in custody, and who had already made a disturbance at Mr. Doran’s house that morning.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into custody directly, for her partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary of initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But, his joy received a sudden check; for within five minutes, he returned in the custody of a sheriff “s officer, informing us, in a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep's, soon paid the money; and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table, filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book, and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their precious value, was a sight indeed.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
