IMPRISONMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does imprisonment mean? 

• IMPRISONMENT (noun)
  The noun IMPRISONMENT has 3 senses:

1. putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment

2. the state of being imprisoned

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

  Familiarity information: IMPRISONMENT used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPRISONMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("imprisonment" is a kind of...):

penalisation; penalization; penalty; punishment (the act of punishing)

Domain category:

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

Derivation:

imprison (lock up or confine, in or as in a jail)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The state of being imprisoned

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

captivity; immurement; imprisonment; incarceration

Context example:

he practiced the immurement of his enemies in the castle dungeon

Hypernyms ("imprisonment" is a kind of...):

confinement (the state of being confined)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "imprisonment"):

durance (imprisonment (especially for a long time))

life imprisonment (a sentence of imprisonment until death)

internment (confinement during wartime)

Derivation:

imprison (confine as if in a prison)

Sense 3

Meaning:

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

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

imprisonment; internment

Hypernyms ("imprisonment" is a kind of...):

confinement (the act of restraining of a person's liberty by confining them)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "imprisonment"):

lockdown (the act of confining prisoners to their cells (usually to regain control during a riot))

false imprisonment ((law) confinement without legal authority)

custody (holding by the police)

Derivation:

imprison (lock up or confine, in or as in a jail)

 Context examples 

For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What would it profit a woman, for example, to get him a few months’ imprisonment if her own ruin must immediately follow?

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

Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this system of imprisonment?

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

The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time—all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Anne entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, "Oh! when shall I leave you again?"

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

For five days this cruel imprisonment continued, with hardly enough food to hold body and soul together.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The imprisonment of Wolf Larsen had happened most opportunely, for what must have been the Indian summer of this high latitude was gone and drizzling stormy weather had set in.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous imprisonment of body and mind.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

All crimes against the state, are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown.

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