immure

American  

[ih-myoor] / ɪˈmyʊər /

verb (used with object)

immured, immuring

1. to enclose within walls.

2. to shut in; seclude or confine.

3. to imprison.

4. to build into or entomb in a wall.

5. Obsolete. to surround with walls; fortify.

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immure British  

/ ɪˈmjʊə /

verb

1. archaic to enclose within or as if within walls; imprison

2. to shut (oneself) away from society

3. obsolete to build into or enclose within a wall

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Other Word Forms

• immuration noun
• immurement noun
• self-immurement noun
• self-immuring adjective
• unimmured adjective

Etymology

Origin of immure

1575–85; < Medieval Latin immūrāre, equivalent to Latin im- im- ¹ + -mūrāre, verbal derivative of mūrus wall ( mural )

Example Sentences

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

Instead, water was directed at the burnt trucks for hours in order to cool down the batteries enough to move them to storage, wherein they could be immured in sand or submerged entirely in water.

From Washington Times

More than 350 pictures, including many by the leading names of the Ukrainian avant-garde, were immured in the vaults of what is now the National Art Museum in Kyiv, owing to their “counterrevolutionary formalist methods.”

From New York Times

In the century or so since “The Great Gatsby” was published, we have been lost in Gatsby’s house, immured in a never-ending revival.

From New York Times

We’re in that place on the human map too often avoided by American novelists: poverty, the subtle prison where society’s marginalized are immured, pick your particular referent.

From New York Times