| Library / English Dictionary |
DUNGEON
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A dark cell (usually underground) where prisoners can be confined
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("dungeon" is a kind of...):
cell; jail cell; prison cell (a room where a prisoner is kept)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dungeon"):
oubliette (a dungeon with the only entrance or exit being a trap door in the ceiling)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The main tower within the walls of a medieval castle or fortress
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("dungeon" is a kind of...):
fastness; stronghold (a strongly fortified defensive structure)
Instance hyponyms:
Black Hole of Calcutta (a dungeon (20 feet square) in a fort in Calcutta where as many as 146 English prisoners were held overnight by Siraj-ud-daula; the next morning only 23 were still alive)
Holonyms ("dungeon" is a part of...):
castle (a large building formerly occupied by a ruler and fortified against attack)
Context examples:
Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence—though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I give you my word that I did not so much as lay a stripe upon his fool's back, but after speaking with him, and telling him how needful the money was to me, I left him for the night to think over the matter in my dungeon.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his minion; I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
His blind and aged father and his gentle sister lay in a noisome dungeon while he enjoyed the free air and the society of her whom he loved.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her fellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and sewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself,—as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish, you die away.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building, which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Muhammadan, who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
