Word.ws English Dictionary

inmates

inmates is the plural of inmate.

Meaning of inmate

Noun

inmate (plural inmates)

  1. A person confined to an institution such as a prison (as a convict) or hospital (as a patient).
  2. A person who shares a residence (such as a hotel guest, a lodger, or a student living on campus), or other place.
    • I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Loomings”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
  3. (uncommon) Synonym of passenger, a person held or riding within a vehicle.
    • P. della Valle writes in the same strain: "And these two, the palankins and the andors [a kind of doli] also differ from one another, for in the andor the cane which sustains it is, as it is in the reti, straight; whereas in the palankin, for the greater convenience of the inmate, and to give more...1916 July, Henry Yule & al., "Padre Maestro Fray Seb. Manrique in Bengal (1628–Sept. 11, 1629)", Bengal Past & Present, Vol. XIII, No. 25, p. 32
    Synonyms:
    passenger

Questions about inmates

What is inmates the plural of?
Inmates is the plural of inmate.

Words near inmates in the dictionary

  1. inmarry
  2. inmarrying
  3. INMARSAT
  4. inmate
  5. inmatehood
  6. inmates
  7. inmeat
  8. inmeats
  9. inmesh
  10. inmeshed
  11. inmeshes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inmates (page history and authors); inmate (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:

Cite this entry: “inmates.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inmates. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.