imprisonment
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English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]- emprisonment (obsolete)
Etymology
[edit]From Anglo-Norman emprisonement, from Old French emprisonnement. See imprison + -ment.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]imprisonment (countable and uncountable, plural imprisonments)
- A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 2:
- His sinews woxen weake and raw / Through long emprisonment and hard constraint.
- 1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC:
- Every confinement of the person is an imprisonment, whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.
- 1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=1 to 5):
- Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these forenamed kings […] pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves […]
Synonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]confinement
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Categories:
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms suffixed with -ment
- English 4-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
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- en:Prison