prisoner

plural prisoners

1. A person incarcerated in a prison, while on trial or serving a sentence.

   Two other prisoners were staying in the same cell as him.

   2 more examples

   The evidence disclosed that the three prisoners were in a public-house together with the prosecutor, Abraham Rhodes, and that in concert with the other two prisoners, the prisoner John Dewhirst placed a pencase on the table in the room where they were assembled, and left the room to get writing-paper.

   1861, Edward William Cox, Reports of Cases in Criminal Law

   American journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan were among the 24 detainees released as part of a complex prisoner swap between Russia, the US and other Western nations. […] Krasikov, a former high-ranking FSB colonel serving a life sentence in a German prison, was on the top of Moscow’s list of Russian prisoners it wanted to exchange.

   2024 August 1, Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova, “Who was freed in major prisoner swap between Russia and the West?”, in CNN

   Synonyms: jailbird

2. Any person held against their will.

   And gainſt the General we will lift our ſwords / And either lanch his greedie thirſting throat, / Or take him priſoner, and his chaine ſhall ſerue / For Manackles, till he be ranſom’d home.

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii

   1 more example

   Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile ; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.

   1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

3. A person who is or feels confined or trapped by a situation or a set of circumstances.

   I'm a prisoner of your love.

   2 more examples

   I am no longer a prisoner to fear, for I am a child of God.

   You're not a hit and run driver, no no, racing away. You just picked up a hitcher, a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

   1976, “Coyote”, in Hejira, performed by Joni Mitchell