Word.ws English Dictionary

durance vile

durance vile noun: a long prison sentence.

Noun

durance vile (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, idiomatic) A long prison sentence.
    • In durance vile here must I wake and weep1794, Robert Burns, Epistle from Esopus to Maria
    • Two of the tribe were captured and put in irons, Binmook and Tommy, whose photographs, taken when in durance vile, I have by me still.1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 74

Questions about durance vile

What does durance vile mean?
Durance vile means a long prison sentence.
What part of speech is durance vile?
Durance vile is a noun.

Words near durance vile in the dictionary

  1. duramycin
  2. duramycins
  3. Duran
  4. Duranbah
  5. durance
  6. durance vile
  7. durances
  8. Durancian
  9. durancy
  10. Durand
  11. Durand Line

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: durance vile (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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