Imprisonment

3 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  imprisonment
       n 1: putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment
       2: the state of being imprisoned; "he was held in captivity
          until he died"; "the imprisonment of captured soldiers";
          "his ignominious incarceration in the local jail"; "he
          practiced the immurement of his enemies in the castle


          dungeon" [syn: {captivity}, {incarceration}, {immurement}]
       3: the act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a
          prison) [syn: {internment}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  43 Moby Thesaurus words for "imprisonment":
     beleaguerment, besetment, blockade, blockading, captivity,
     circumscription, close arrest, confinement, cordoning, custody,
     detention, dismemberment, durance, durance vile, duress, enclosure,
     envelopment, estrapade, galleys, hard labor, house arrest,
     immuration, immurement, impalement, incarceration, inclusion,
     internment, jailing, keelhauling, martyrdom, penal servitude,
     picketing, quarantine, railriding, remand, rock pile, siege,
     strappado, tar-and-feathering, term of imprisonment, the gantlet,
     torment, torture
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  IMPRISONMENT. The restraint of a person contrary to his will. 2 Inst. 589; 
  Baldw. Rep. 239, 600. Imprisonment is either lawful or unlawful; lawful 
  imprisonment is used either for crimes or for the appearance of a party in a 
  civil suit, or on arrest in execution. 
       2. Imprisonment for crimes is either for the appearance of a person 
  accused, as when he cannot give bail; or it is the effect of a sentence, and 
  then it is a part of the punishment. 
       3. Imprisonment in civil cases takes place when a defendant on being 
  sued on bailable process refuses or cannot give the bail legally demanded, 
  or is under a capias ad satisfaciendum, when he is taken in execution under 
  a judgment. An unlawful imprisonment, commonly called false imprisonment, 
  (q.v.) means any illegal imprisonment whatever, either with or without 
  process, or under color of process wholly illegal, without regard to any 
  question whether any crime has been committed or a debt due. 
       4. As to what will amount to an imprisonment, the most obvious modes 
  are confinement in a prison or a private house, but a forcible detention in 
  the street, or the touching of a person by a peace officer by way of arrest, 
  are also imprisonments. Bac. Ab. Trespass, D 3; 1 Esp. R. 431, 526. It has 
  been decided that lifting up a person in his chair, and carrying him out of 
  the room in which he was sitting with others, and excluding him from the 
  room, was not an imprisonment; 1 Chit. Pr. 48; and the merely giving charge 
  of a person to a peace officer, not followed by any actual apprehension of 
  the person, does not amount to an imprisonment, though the party to avoid 
  it, next day attend at a police; 1 Esp. R. 431; New Rep. 211; 1 Carr. & 
  Payn. 153; S. C. II Eng. Com. Law, R. 351; and if, in consequence of a 
  message from a sheriff's officer holding a writ, the defendant execute and 
  send him a bail bond, such submission to the process will not constitute an 
  arrest. 6 Barn. & Cress. 528; S. C. 13 Eng. Com. Law Rep. 245; Dowl. & R.
  233. 
  Vide, generally, 14 Vin. Ab. 342; 4 Com. Dig. 618; 1 Chit. Pr. 47; Merl. 
  Repert. mot Emprisonment; 17 Eng. Com. L. R. 246, n.