imprisonment

What it means

1. countableuncountableA 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

   3 more examples

   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

   Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these forenamed kings […] pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves […]

   1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=1 to 5)

   Human rights organisations say many experience imprisonment and beatings along the way.

   2023 August 21, Paul Adams, “Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards - report”, in BBC, archived from the original on 03 Feb 2024

   Synonyms: incarceration, jaildom

In a sentence

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

Where it comes from

1. Old Frenchemprisonnement
2. Anglo-Normanemprisonement
3. Englishimprisonment

From Anglo-Norman emprisonement, from Old French emprisonnement. See imprison + -ment.