PRISON

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A correctional institution where persons are confined while on trial or for punishment

Synonyms:

prison; prison house

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("prison" is a kind of...):

correctional institution (a penal institution maintained by the government)

Meronyms (parts of "prison"):

cellblock; ward (a division of a prison (usually consisting of several cells))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prison"):

bastille (a jail or prison (especially one that is run in a tyrannical manner))

chokey; choky (British slang (dated) for a prison)

nick ((British slang) a prison)

panopticon (a circular prison with cells distributed around a central surveillance station; proposed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791)

state prison (a prison maintained by a state of the U.S.)

Instance hyponyms:

Newgate (a former prison in London notorious for its unsanitary conditions and burnt down in riots in 1780; a new prison was built on the same spot but was torn down in 1902)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A prisonlike situation; a place of seeming confinement

Synonyms:

prison; prison house

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("prison" is a kind of...):

situation; state of affairs (the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time)

Credits

Context examples:

If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As it is, it’s in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the door.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The Cowardly Lion was much pleased to hear that the Wicked Witch had been melted by a bucket of water, and Dorothy at once unlocked the gate of his prison and set him free.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that, thank God that 'Father and Mother were particular', and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Because, you see, since I am mutineers' doctor, or prison doctor as I prefer to call it, says Doctor Livesey in his pleasantest way, I make it a point of honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!) and the gallows.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Finally, finding him proof against every threat, they had hurled him back into his prison, and after reproaching Melas with his treachery, which appeared from the newspaper advertisement, they had stunned him with a blow from a stick, and he remembered nothing more until he found us bending over him.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to be acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it struck her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general's lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she stole gently from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery, to see if it appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too early.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Places may also be sites that are investigated in the context of health care, social work, public health administration (e.g., buildings, picnic grounds, day care centers, prisons, counties, states, and other focuses of epidemiological events).

(Place, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

“Have you an order to see him in prison?”