house arrest

American  

noun

house arrests plural

1. confinement of an arrested person to their residence or to a public place, such as a hospital, instead of in a jail.

   He was under house arrest until the day of his trial.

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house arrest British  

noun

1. confinement to one's own home

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house arrest Cultural  

1. Forcible detention in one's house rather than in a prison. House arrest is used by some nations as a way to silence political dissent without the elaborate trials and criminal proceedings that would bring bad publicity.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• house arrests
  plural

Etymology

Origin of house arrest

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

house arrest

Moraes had also previously denied Milei permission to visit the former president while he was under house arrest in Brasilia.

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

After Koroma was charged and placed under house arrest, Ecowas brokered a deal with the government of Sierra Leone, allowing the former president to go into exile in Nigeria and seek medical attention there.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026

Deng also crushed intraparty democracy, Pei said, with only Zhao Ziyang—the reform-minded party secretary who was placed under house arrest after opposing the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989—daring to experiment with it briefly.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026

His co-conspirator Mark Chavez was sentenced to house arrest.

From Barron's ● May 27, 2026

It was just a few weeks after the authorities released him, still under house arrest, to his brother’s house in Bloemfontein that he died.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela