Library / English Dictionary

IMPRISON

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

Example:

the murderer was incarcerated for the rest of his life

Synonyms:

gaol; immure; imprison; incarcerate; jail; jug; lag; put away; put behind bars; remand

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "imprison" is one way to...):

confine; detain (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to imprison the prisoners

Derivation:

imprisonment (the act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a prison))

imprisonment (putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Confine as if in a prison

Example:

His daughters are virtually imprisoned in their own house; he does not let them go out without a chaperone

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "imprison" is one way to...):

confine; detain (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

imprisonment (the state of being imprisoned)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Out of life he had captured something big and attempted to imprison it in the story.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And it is all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the imprisoned spirit.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he came to relieve.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It appeared to my childish fancy, as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The evening was now drawing close, and well I knew that at sunset the Thing, which was till then imprisoned there, would take new freedom and could in any of many forms elude all pursuit.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Rhyme and metre and structure were serious enough in themselves, but there was, over and beyond them, an intangible and evasive something that he caught in all great poetry, but which he could not catch and imprison in his own.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)