behind bars

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Prepositional phrase

behind bars

1. (figuratively, idiomatic) In jail, in prison.
   • 1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXVII, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1906 February 26, →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

in jail or prison

• Arabic: (calques of Engish) خَلْفَ الْقُضْبَان (ḵalfa l-quḍbān), وَرَاءَ الْقُضْبَان (warāʔa l-quḍbān)
• Azerbaijani: dəmir barmaqlıq arxasında
• Belarusian: за кра́тамі (za krátami)
• Bulgarian: зад реше́тките (zad rešétkite)
• Catalan: a la garjola
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 關在監牢裡／关在监牢里 (guān zài jiānláo lǐ), 身陷囹圄 (zh) (shēnxiànlíngyǔ)

• Czech: za mřížemi
• Danish: bag tremmer
• Dutch: achter de tralies
• Finnish: telkien takana, kalterien takana, vankilassa
• French: derrière les barreaux (fr), au violon (fr)
• German: hinter Gitter
• Greek: στη φυλακή (sti fylakí)
• Hebrew: מֵאֲחוֹרֵי סוֹרָג וּבְרִיחַ (me'akhoréi sorág uvríakh)
• Hungarian: rács mögött
• Icelandic: bakvið lás og sleggju
• Indonesian: di balik jeruji besi
• Italian: dietro le sbarre
• Japanese: 獄中で (ja) (ごくちゅうで, gokuchū de)
• Korean: 감옥에서 (ko) (gamogeseo)
• Latvian: aiz restēm
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: bak lås og slå (no)

  Nynorsk: bak lås og slå

• Polish: za kratkami (pl)
• Portuguese: atrás das grades
• Romanian: după gratii
• Russian: за решёткой (za rešótkoj)
• Serbo-Croatian: иза решетака
• Slovak: za mrežami
• Spanish: entre rejas (es), tras las rejas
• Swedish: bakom lås och bom (sv)
• Telugu: కటకటాల్లో (kaṭakaṭāllō)
• Thai: please add this translation if you can
• Ukrainian: за ґра́тами (za grátamy)

See also

• See also Thesaurus:jail

References

• “behind bars”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.