Word.ws English Dictionary

confine oneself

confine oneself verb: to limit or restrict themself to a certain thing or place.

Verb

confine oneself (third-person singular simple present confines oneself, present participle confining oneself, simple past and past participle confined oneself)

  1. (often, reflexive) To limit or restrict themself to a certain thing or place.
    • He is to confine himself to the compass of numbers and the slavery of rhyme.1680, John Dryden, Ovid’s Epistles translated by several hands, London: Jacob Tonson, Preface
    • There was no limit on drinks, and the guy next to me tucked away a few G and Ts. I confined myself to a pleasant Brewdog Ale and a glass of slightly insipid wine.2025 June 11, Christian Wolmar, “First Class delights with an occasional pang of hunger”, in RAIL, number 1037, page 34

Forms of confine oneself

third-person singular presentconfines oneself
present participleconfining oneself
past participleconfined oneself
pastconfined oneself

Questions about confine oneself

What does confine oneself mean?
Confine oneself means to limit or restrict themself to a certain thing or place.
What part of speech is confine oneself?
Confine oneself is a verb.
What is the past tense of confine oneself?
The past tense of confine oneself is confined oneself.

Words near confine oneself in the dictionary

  1. configuring
  2. confin'd
  3. confinable
  4. confination
  5. confine
  6. confine oneself
  7. confineable
  8. confined
  9. confined oneself
  10. confined space
  11. confined spaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: confine oneself (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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