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lockdown

[lok-doun]

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SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR lockdown ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

the confining of prisoners to their cells, as following a riot or other disturbance.

a security measure taken during an emergency to prevent people from leaving or entering a building: The school remains under lockdown due to police activity in the area.

Origin of lockdown

1970–75; lock¹ + -down, probably extracted from nouns formed from phrasal verbs, such as crackdown, shutdown, etc.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for lockdown

isolation, solitary

Examples from the Web for lockdown

Contemporary Examples of lockdown

Hence, I suspect, the panic, the lockdown, the capitulation.
Pyongyang Shuffle: Hollywood In Dead Panic Over Sony Hack
James Poulos
December 19, 2014
When it hits your city, be ready to lockdown your house and banish outside family members, they seem to suggest.
Apocalypse Now: Preppers Are Gearing Up for Ebola
Nina Strochlic
October 17, 2014
Police put the school in lockdown and searched the classrooms and lockers, with no result.
Thank God the Murrysville School Attack Wasn’t Guns
Michael Daly
April 9, 2014
The Senate and House went on lockdown amid reports of gunfire nearby.
Live Updates: Shooting on Capitol Hill
The Daily Beast
October 3, 2013
Her own daughter was not at that school but a nearby school, and it went on lockdown.
The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne on the Devastating Oklahoma Tornado
Wayne Coyne
May 23, 2013

British Dictionary definitions for lockdown

lockdown

noun

US a security measure in which those inside a building such as a prison, school, or hospital are required to remain confined in it for a timemany schools remained under lockdown yesterday

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for lockdown

n.

also lock-down, from 1940s in various mechanical senses, from lock (v.) + down (adv.). Prison sense is by 1975, American English.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper