coop up

present singular third person coops up · participle present cooping up · participle past cooped up · past cooped up

1. To confine in a restricted place or situation

   This was a fine day's outing for anybody who had been cooped up in the shops for a few months.

   1944 September and October, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—I”, in Railway Magazine, page 285

   1 more example

   We ran for the better part of a mile without hearing anything more from the direction of the harbor, and then I reduced the speed to a walk, for the exercise was telling on us who had been cooped up for so long in the confined interior of the U-33. Puffing and panting, we plodded on until within about a mile of the harbor we came upon a sight that brought us all up standing.

   1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC