immure
Americanverb (used with object)
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immures,
present (3rd person singular)
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immured,
past participle, past
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immuring
present participle
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to enclose within walls.
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to shut in; seclude or confine.
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to imprison.
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to build into or entomb in a wall.
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Obsolete. to surround with walls; fortify.
verb
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archaic to enclose within or as if within walls; imprison
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to shut (oneself) away from society
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obsolete to build into or enclose within a wall
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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immuresimple
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immuressimple
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have immuredperfect
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has immuredperfect
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am immuringprogressive
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are immuringprogressive
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is immuringprogressive
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have been immuringperfect progressive
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has been immuringperfect progressive
Past
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immuredsimple
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had immuredperfect
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was immuringprogressive
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were immuringprogressive
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had been immuringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of immure
1575–85; < Medieval Latin immūrāre, equivalent to Latin im- im- 1 + -mūrāre, verbal derivative of mūrus wall ( cf. mural)
Explanation
When you immure someone or something, you put it behind a wall, as in a jail or some other kind of confining space. You may recognize the -mur- in immure as the root for "wall," as in mural, which is a painting on a wall, or intramural, literally "inside the walls," as, for instance, the walls of a school — intramural sports are played among teams from the same school. You don't need a jail to immure someone. Rapunzel was immured in her tower. At the end of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the lovers are immured in the tomb.
Vocabulary lists containing immure
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The U.S. has had to learn--repeatedly, with every immigrant wave--that it cannot immure itself behind a wall of immigration restrictions and cultural purity.
From Time Magazine Archive
Other walls would immure Cobscook, the lower bay, 50 sq. mi. more.
From Time Magazine Archive
For nature makes us free and unrestrained, but we bind and confine immure and force ourselves into small and scanty space.
From Plutarch's Morals by Arthur Richard Shilleto
Can it, can it be, my lord and husband, That so young, thou, reckless, would’st immure me?
From Servian Popular Poetry by John Bowring
Eloquent silence! able to immure An atheist's thoughts, and blast an epicure.
From Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II by E. K. (Edmund Kerchever) Chambers
I didn't know anybody could escape from that awful sort of prison-house in which our—I'm English now—in which our upper class immures itself.
From Michael by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
From the humanist point of view, it immures the mind in the study of remote epochs and past civilisations, and does nothing to prepare the pupil for the fulfilment of contemporary duties.
From The Forerunners by Romain Rolland
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant, Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
From Paradise Lost by John Milton
My acquaintance with Mrs. Gerome is too slight to warrant the utterance of an opinion relative to her idiosyncrasies, but I am afraid cynicism rather than grief immures her from society.
From Vashti or, Until Death Us Do Part by Augusta J. Evans Wilson
No trophy this—a Stone unhewn, And stands where here the field immures The nameless brave whose palms are won.
From Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville
Abandoned by or cut off from their families, they are immured in lonely old age, waiting with restless resignation as the hours of their lives wind down.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Portland Fire & Rescue responded to reports of a person immured in a pond near Portland’s Heron Lakes Golf Club at around 8:17 a.m.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 2, 2023
“She is a friendless orphan,” said Levy, “whose relatives have immured her in an asylum without ever producing her for the court.”
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2019
But it also sounds, marvelously, like a geographical location in which a character from a Paul Bowles novel might be immured.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 19, 2018
His keen eye read her meaning, though, affecting not to perceive it, he pleasantly said, 'How? immured in your chamber? and of a gala day?'
From The Wanderer (Volume 3 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Fanny Burney
Whether he’s an exemplar of patient fortitude or of contemptible cowardice, Assange, 44, has managed to frustrate the British and Swedish governments by immuring himself within the embassy, which is treated as Ecuadorean territory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2015
He learned this fact by immuring himself in an air-conditioned laboratory for twelve days last winter.
From Time Magazine Archive
In our own time the burial of a bottle with coins under a foundation stone is the faded memory of the immuring of a human victim.
From Ecclesiastical Curiosities by Various
Good little Rondelet, or any of his pupils, would have as soon thought of burning a woman for a witch as they would have of immuring her in a nunnery.
From Women and Politics by Charles Kingsley
To think of immuring such a fair creature within the dull walls of a cloister!”
From The Bandolero A Marriage among the Mountains by Mayne Reid
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
