prisoner
Americannoun
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a person who is confined in prison or kept in custody, especially as the result of legal process.
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a person or thing that is deprived of liberty or kept in restraint.
noun
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a person deprived of liberty and kept in prison or some other form of custody as a punishment for a crime, while awaiting trial, or for some other reason
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a person confined by any of various restraints
we are all prisoners of time
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informal to be uncompromising and resolute in one's actions
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to capture and hold someone as a prisoner, esp as a prisoner of war
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of prisoner
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Explanation
A prisoner is a person being held in prison as a punishment. During wartime a prisoner is someone held captive by the enemy. Alternately, if you’re so attractive you can’t leave the house, you’re a prisoner of your own good looks. Someone who's caught robbing a bank or stealing a car will probably become a prisoner, locked inside a prison for as long as the sentence specifies. If you feel stuck or confined in some way, you may consider yourself a metaphorical prisoner, like an actor who whines that he’s a prisoner of his own success, since he’s not able to go anywhere without cameras flashing and fans screaming.
Vocabulary lists containing prisoner
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.
The Prisoner could be straight out of a Godard film.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 27, 2026
Prisoner swaps -- and the exchange of remains of dead soldiers retrieved from the battlefield -- are one of the only areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv.
From Barron's • Mar. 18, 2026
Prisoner exchanges are one of the few areas of successful cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia’s full-blown invasion, with over 10,000 combatants exchanged in that time.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 11, 2025
Glenny also hosts podcasts including Putin: Prisoner of Power and The Rise of the Iron Men.
From BBC • Dec. 3, 2025
“Did you see any of us winning that last game? I thought the cockroach book was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because they eat Cockroach Clusters at Honeydukes.”
From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein
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.
