Word.ws English Dictionary

confiners

confiners is the plural of confiner.

Meaning of confiner

Noun (1)

confiner (plural confiners)

  1. One who, or that which, limits or restrains.
    • […] as he attended him through the streets, the common people, and even women, uttered loud exclamations of abuse against him, calling him the murderer of syeds, and confiner of Chaund Sultana.1794, Jonathan Scott, transl., Ferishta’s History of Dekkan from the First Mahummedan Conquests, volume I, Shrewsbury, page 311

Noun (2)

confiner (plural confiners)

  1. (obsolete) A person who lives on the confines, boundary or edge; a neighbour.
    • So did the worldes proud Mistres Rome at first
      Striue with a hard beginning, warr’d with need;
      Forcing her strong Confiners to the worst,
      And in her bloud her greatnes first did breed:1599, Samuel Daniel, The Civil Wars of England, Book 1, Stanza 18, in Poeticall Essayes, London: Simon Waterson, p. 4
  2. (obsolete) A person who lives within the confines; an inhabitant.
    • The senate hath stirr’d up the confiners
      And gentlemen of Italy, most willing spirits,
      That promise noble service […]1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  3. (obsolete) A prisoner incarcerated for a set term.
    • Lancaster Castle […] contains two classes of prisoners; first, the untried, and those sentenced to death or transportation; and secondly, confiners,—persons sent hither for terms of imprisonment and labour.1819, Joseph John Gurney, Notes on a Visit Made to Some of the Prisons in Scotland and the North of England in Company with Elizabeth Fry, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, p. 64

Questions about confiners

What is confiners the plural of?
Confiners is the plural of confiner.

Words near confiners in the dictionary

  1. confinement loaf
  2. confinement time
  3. confinement times
  4. confinements
  5. confiner
  6. confiners
  7. confines
  8. confines oneself
  9. confinest
  10. confineth
  11. confining

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: confiners (page history and authors); confiner (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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Cite this entry: “confiners.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/confiners. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.