IMPRISON

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does imprison mean? 

• IMPRISON (verb)
  The verb IMPRISON has 2 senses:

1. lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

2. confine as if in a prison

  Familiarity information: IMPRISON used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPRISON (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they imprison    ... he / she / it imprisons   
Past simple: imprisoned   
Past participle: imprisoned   
-ing form: imprisoning   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

gaol; immure; imprison; incarcerate; jail; jug; lag; put away; put behind bars; remand

Context example:

the murderer was incarcerated for the rest of his life

Hypernyms (to "imprison" is one way to...):

confine; detain (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to imprison the prisoners

Derivation:

imprisonment (the act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a prison))

imprisonment (putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Confine as if in a prison

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Context example:

His daughters are virtually imprisoned in their own house; he does not let them go out without a chaperone

Hypernyms (to "imprison" is one way to...):

confine; detain (deprive of freedom; take into confinement)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

imprisonment (the state of being imprisoned)

 Context examples 

She did not remember the lout, nor the imprisoned soul, nor the man who had stared at her in all masculineness and delighted and frightened her.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

You have been brought there to personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was the old, indomitable, terrible Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been so invincible and splendid.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Immediately after such fights he had always been imprisoned again.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

So after that she took no food to the imprisoned Lion; but every day she came to the gate at noon and asked, "Are you ready to be harnessed like a horse?"

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

I conjured him to conceal from all persons what I had told him of the Houyhnhnms; because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the Inquisition.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He never said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He knows well that I am imprisoned; and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it, he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—this would be unendurable.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)