durance vile

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English

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Noun

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durance vile (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, idiomatic) A long prison sentence.
    • 1794, Robert Burns, Epistle from Esopus to Maria:
      In durance vile here must I wake and weep
    • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 74:
      Two of the tribe were captured and put in irons, Binmook and Tommy, whose photographs, taken when in durance vile, I have by me still.
    • 1994 February 19, The Canberra Times, page 15, column 3:
      That is, Messrs Brown and Hinton would have been in durance vile before the issue could be litigated: the High Court does not give advisory decisions.

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