imprisonment
UK/ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/
imprisonment noun: a confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime.
Noun
imprisonment (countable and uncountable, plural imprisonments)
- A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime.
- His sinews woxen weake and raw / Through long emprisonment and hard constraint.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 2
- Every confinement of the person is an imprisonment, whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- incarceration, jaildom
imprisonment meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
imprisonment in Hindi
- confinement
- कारावास kārāvās
imprisonment in Tamil
- காவலடைப்பு, சிறைப்படுத்தல், சிறையடைப்பு, சிறைவைப்பு சிறைத் தண்டனை சிறையிடல்
imprisonment in Marathi
- तुरुंगवास, कारावासाची शिक्षा
imprisonment in Urdu
- حبس, حراست, قید
More languagesFewer languages
- imprisonment in Bengali
- কারাদণ্ড, কারাবাস, বন্দিদশা
- imprisonment in Telugu
- చెర cera
- imprisonment in Malayalam
- തടവ് taṭavŭ
- imprisonment in Kannada
- ಸೆರೆವಾಸ
- imprisonment in Gujarati
- કેદની સજા, કેદ
- imprisonment in Odia
- ଜେଲ jela
- imprisonment in Arabic
- حَبْس ḥabs, سَجْن sajn
- imprisonment in Indonesian
- hukuman penjara
- imprisonment in Thai
- จำคุก jam-kúk
- imprisonment in Vietnamese
- phạt tù
Examples of imprisonment in a sentence
- He pleaded urgently for release from what he considered to be an unjust imprisonment.
- The defendant was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for PWID marijuana.
- This crime is liable to imprisonment for life.
Synonyms of imprisonment
Forms of imprisonment
| plural | imprisonments |
|---|---|
| alternative form (obsolete) | emprisonment |
Origin of imprisonment
From Anglo-Norman emprisonement, from Old French emprisonnement. See imprison + -ment.
Words formed from imprisonment
Phrases with imprisonment
Questions about imprisonment
- What does imprisonment mean?
- Imprisonment means a confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime.
- What is imprisonment in Hindi?
- Imprisonment in Hindi is कारावास (kārāvās). See Imprisonment meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is imprisonment?
- Imprisonment is a noun.
- How do you pronounce imprisonment?
- Imprisonment is pronounced /ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of imprisonment?
- The plural of imprisonment is imprisonments.
Words near imprisonment in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: imprisonment (page history and authors); imprisonment (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); imprisonment (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); imprisonment (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Imprisonment (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); చెర (Telugu) (page history and authors); imprisonment (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); imprisonment (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ଜେଲ (Odia) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-imprisonment.ogg.
Cite this entry: “imprisonment.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imprisonment. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.