internment
Americannoun
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an act or instance of interning, or confining a person or ship to prescribed limits during wartime.
the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
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the state of being interned; confinement.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of internment
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Explanation
Internment means putting a person in prison or other kind of detention, generally in wartime. During World War II, the American government put Japanese-Americans in internment camps, fearing they might be loyal to Japan. Internment usually doesn’t involve a trial, so you're being held because someone thinks you might be dangerous, but there’s no proof. The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is now widely considered to have been a terrible mistake, in that the citizens who were detained — some for as long as four years — were not traitors, but loyal Americans, and their internment caused them considerable emotional and economic hardship. Internment comes from the Latin internus, “inward.”
Vocabulary lists containing internment
Farewell to Manzanar
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They Called Us Enemy
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World War II
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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.
In California, language related to the internment of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar National Historic Site, as well as the history of Indigenous people in Death Valley and Muir Woods came under scrutiny.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 13, 2026
Ms. Gage deals with it by visiting the remnants of a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, Calif., and the research facility in Los Alamos, N.M., where U.S. government scientists built the atomic bomb.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026
The overt racism and grotesque unfairness of Japanese-American internment eventually provoked some degree of societal reckoning, if only years later.
From Salon • Jul. 6, 2025
He was detained in the early 1970s when the government in Northern Ireland introduced internment without trial for those suspected of paramilitary involvement.
From BBC • Apr. 29, 2025
But there is no escaping the fact that our internment accelerated the process, made it happen so suddenly it was almost tangible.
From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston
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.
