Prisoned

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈpɹɪzənd/

Definitions

1. Kept within prison walls or held captive by law enforcement
2. Confined inside a jail or similar facility by authority
3. Restricted in liberty by being placed under arrest or imprisonment

Etymology: "Prisoned" is simply the past tense and past participle of "prison" used as a verb, so its history is really the history of "prison." That word traces back to the Latin "prehendere," meaning "to seize" or "to grasp," the same root that gives English "prehension," the capacity to grip something. A "prehensio" was an act of seizing, and by extension, the seizing of a person. The word reached English through Old French "prison," which carried the sense of being taken and held. Old English borrowed it as "prisūn," and by Middle English it had settled into the familiar meaning of a place of confinement. Because "prehension" and "prison" are doublets, two forms of one Latin source that entered English by different routes, they look only loosely alike despite sharing an ancestor.

Synonyms: incarcerated, confined, imprisoned

Antonyms: freed, released