Adjacent Words

Confinement definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

CONFI'NEMENT, n.
1. Restraint within limits; imprisonment; any restraint of liberty by force or other obstacle or necessity; as the confinement of a debtor or criminal to a prison, or of troops to a besieged town.
2. Voluntary restraint; seclusion; as the confinement of a man to his house, or to his studies.
3. Voluntary restraint in action or practice; as confinement to a particular diet.
4. Restraint from going abroad by sickness, particularly by child-birth.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: concluding state of pregnancy; from the onset of contractions to the birth of a child; "she was in labor for six hours" [syn: parturiency, labor, labour, confinement, lying-in, travail, childbed]
2: the act of restraining of a person's liberty by confining them
3: the state of being confined; "he was held in confinement"
4: the act of keeping something within specified bounds (by force if necessary); "the restriction of the infection to a focal area" [syn: restriction, confinement]

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 1592 an act of confining ; the state of being confined <solitary confinement>; especially lying-in

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 the act or an instance of confining; the state of being confined. 2 the time of a woman's giving birth.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Confinement Con*fine"ment, n. 1. Restraint within limits; imprisonment; any restraint of liberty; seclusion. The mind hates restraint, and is apt to fancy itself under confinement when the sight is pent up. --Addison. 2. Restraint within doors by sickness, esp. that caused by childbirth; lying-in.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Confinement is the state of being forced to stay in a prison or another place which you cannot leave. She had been held in solitary confinement for four months...

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Restraint. 2. Imprisonment, incarceration, captivity, duress, durance. 3. Lying-in, childbed, delivery, parturition, childbirth.

Moby Thesaurus

accouchement, beleaguerment, besetment, birth, birth throes, birthing, blessed event, blockade, blockading, boundary, bounds, childbearing, childbed, childbirth, circumscription, closeness, constraint, continence, cordoning, cramp, cramping, crowdedness, delivery, discipline, dismemberment, enclosure, envelopment, estrapade, galleys, genesis, giving birth, hair, hairbreadth, hairsbreadth, hard labor, hatching, having a baby, immurement, impalement, imprisonment, incapaciousness, incarceration, inclusion, incommodiousness, jailing, keelhauling, labor, limit, limitation, martyrdom, moderation, multiparity, narrow gauge, narrowness, nascency, nativity, nearness, parturition, penal servitude, picketing, prescription, proscription, qualification, quarantine, railriding, restrain, restraint, restrictedness, restriction, rock pile, siege, slenderness, stint, straitness, strappado, strictness, tar-and-feathering, the Nativity, the gantlet, the stork, tight squeeze, tightness, torment, torture, travail