prison
Americannoun
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a building for the confinement of persons held while awaiting trial, persons sentenced after conviction, etc.
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any place of confinement or involuntary restraint.
noun
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a public building used to house convicted criminals and accused persons remanded in custody and awaiting trial See also jail penitentiary reformatory
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any place of confinement or seeming confinement
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of prison
before 1150; Middle English prison, earlier prisun < Old French, variant of preson imprisonment, a prison < Latin pre ( hē ) nsiōn- (stem of prehēnsiō ) a seizure, arrest, equivalent to prehēns ( us ) (past participle of prehendere to seize) + -iōn- -ion; doublet of prehension
Explanation
A prison is a place where criminals and people waiting for trials are locked up. If you’ve been cooped up in the house, you might feel like you’re stuck inside prison walls. But if you’re not, go outside already. A person who's been sentenced to time in prison is called a prisoner. Prisons vary, but usually prisoners are confined to a small cell, with time spent in large groups for eating, working, and exercise. If you feel like you're stuck in a place or a situation, you might call that prison: "I can't wait to go home — this summer camp is like a prison!" The Latin root is prension, "laying hold of."
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.
See Examples For:
Last winter, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi clashed with Weiss over the editor’s decision to hold a story about an El Salvador maximum-security prison.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm sentenced Gray to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
Once that term has been completed, offenders remain in prison until the parole board decides they can be freed.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Hamm entered into an arrangement where she would accept conviction on three counts of unauthorized use of property while maintaining her innocence and avoiding prison.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
Betsie had been right: she and I were out of prison.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
Dark tourism research reveals that people are drawn to places associated with death, disaster, tragedy and the uncanny, whether former prisons, abandoned sites, or locations connected to unsettling historical events.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
Shortly after coming into power, the Labour government, faced with warnings that prisons would run out of space within days, released thousands of inmates.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
Dhillon said both investigations into the two women’s prisons are “being pursued vigorously and simultaneously.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
It seemed far more likely that prisons would fade away.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
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.
