imprison
v.to put someone in a place they cannot leave, like a jail or a locked room. It means taking away someone's freedom.
v.to confine a person in a prison or a place of restricted movement. Transitive; implies a formal or forceful deprivation of liberty.
“The judge decided to imprison the thief for two years.”
“The government chose to imprison the political activists without a trial during the national emergency.”
“Historians argue that the decision to imprison the former monarch only served to galvanize the resistance and accelerate the eventual revolution.”
The verb is transitive and requires a direct object, typically a person or group.
Imprison describes the act of confinement; use 'for' to indicate the duration of the sentence.
“Imprisoned in a makeshift guardhouse in the middle of Oyster Bay (located in an old building used to bake bread), Maltbie waited for his sentence of death by hanging to be carried out.”
“During the war, the Western Allies captured an estimated 35,000 Japanese service members, compared with ne arly 8 million Germans, including some 340,400 imprisoned in camps across the United States.”
Inherited from Middle English imprisonen, emprisounen, emprisonen, from Old French emprisonner. Equivalent to im- + prison.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.