imprisonment

English

Alternative forms

• emprisonment (obsolete)

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman emprisonement, from Old French emprisonnement. See imprison +‎ -ment.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/

• Audio (US)

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Noun

imprisonment (countable and uncountable, plural imprisonments)

1. 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

• incarceration
• jaildom

Derived terms

Translations