| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| prison |
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| SYLLABICATION: | pris·on |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  pr z  n |
| NOUN: | 1. A place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention, especially persons convicted of crimes. 2. A place or condition of confinement or forcible restraint. 3. A state of imprisonment or captivity. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: pris·oned, pris·on·ing, pris·ons
To confine in or as if in a prison; imprison. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English, from Old French, alteration (influenced by Old French pris, taken) of Latin pr nsi , prnsin-, a seizing, from *prehnsi, from prehnsus, past participle of prehendere, to seize. See ghend- in Appendix I. | | WORD HISTORY: | The word prison can be traced back to the Latin word prnsi, “the action or power of making an arrest.” This in turn is derived from the verb prehendere or prndere, which meant “to take hold of, take into custody, arrest.” Prnsi then surfaces in the Old French of the 12th century with the form prison and the senses “capture” and “place of imprisonment.” This new sense could have already been developed in Latin and not been recorded, but we have to wait until the 12th century to see it, the sense “captivity” being added in the same century. From Old French as well as the Medieval Latin word priso, “prison,” derived from Old French, came our Middle English word prisoun, first recorded in a work written before 1121 in the sense “imprisonment.” The sense “place of imprisonment” is recorded shortly afterward in a text copied down before 1225 but perhaps actually written in the Old English period before the Norman Conquest.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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