behind bars
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Audio (AU) (file)
Prepositional phrase[edit]
- (figuratively, idiomatic) In jail, in prison.
- 1905, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXVII, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, →OCLC:
- There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
- 2001 May 7, Margot Roosevelt et al., “The War Against The War On Drugs”, in Time:
- Some 460,000 Americans are behind bars for drug offenses.
- 2014 November 27, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian:
- Leading Jordanian exponents of the Salafi-jihadi world view, such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, are now behind bars or silent, fearing arrest by the powerful mukhabarat secret police.
Translations[edit]
in jail or prison
|
See also[edit]
- See also Thesaurus:jail
References[edit]
- “behind bars”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.