fence in

Idioms  

1. Also, hem in. Restrict or confine someone, as in He wanted to take on more assignments but was fenced in by his contract, or Their father was old-fashioned and the children were hemmed in by his rules. Both expressions transfer a literal form of enclosure to a figurative one. The first gained currency from a popular song in the style of a cowboy folk song by Cole Porter, “Don't Fence Me In” (1944), in which the cowboy celebrates open land and starry skies. The variant is much older, dating from the late 1500s.

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Example Sentences

Images on social media showed a person scaling the fence in a costume that included a smiley face head with sunglasses, prompting the monkeys to scatter.

From Barron's • May 18, 2026

In a Feb. 14 letter to the crew’s families after the second extension was announced, he wrote that he had expected to be home within weeks, fixing the fence in his backyard.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 21, 2026

Franzoso suffered a head injury in a collision with a fence in La Parva, Chile, in September.

From BBC • Feb. 7, 2026

Not just with the erection of the fence in Hungary but, among several examples, the deployment of riot police in Croatia, and migrants being detained in Slovenia.

From BBC • Sep. 3, 2025

We stood against the chain-link fence in front of the dead man’s neighbor’s house watching the gargantuan canine panting and licking his chops and whining inside the car.

From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall

Related Words

• apprehend
• commit
• detain
• hold
• incarcerate
• jail
• lock up
• remand