The act of confining someone in a prison (or as if in a prison)

Usage examples of imprisonment.

He answered my question by the narrative of his imprisonment and flight, the whole story being a tissue of absurdities and lies.

I looked upon it as a favour to be left alone, he answered that I had grown wiser in the four months of my imprisonment.

Take care not to irritate me, Apollonius, or your punishment will exceed the usual imprisonment.

When the reader came to the allusions to secret arrests, protracted imprisonments, and the tedious formalities of the law and lawyers, he declared that it would be necessary to pull down the Bastile before it could be acted with safety, as Beaumarchais was ridiculing every thing which ought to be respected.

The Court then enunciated the principle that where a fine or imprisonment imposed on the contemnor is designed to coerce him to do what he has refused to do, the proceeding is one for civil contempt.

The President directs that the sentences of all deserters who have been condemned by court-martial to death, and that have not been otherwise acted upon by him, be mitigated to imprisonment during the war at the Dry Tortugas, Florida, where they will be sent under suitable guards by orders from army commanders.

He wanted to enjoy life egoistically, but he suffered imprisonment and finally went mad.

For myself, I can say that since I became a knight errant I have been valiant, well-mannered, liberal, polite, generous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient, long-suffering in labors, imprisonments, and enchantments, and although only a short while ago I saw myself locked in a cage like a madman, I think that with the valor of my arm, and heaven favoring me, and fortune not opposing me, in a few days I shall find myself the king of some kingdom where I can display the gratitude and liberality of my heart.

But should any officious functionary come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than Fellside Manor.

So also was Archdeacon, who, in addition, still showed his belief in physical force by his connection with Fenianism, for which he suffered imprisonment.

He returned to this country again, and was arrested in 1867 on a charge of Fenianism, and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment.

We had been good friends during the year before my imprisonment, but I had heard nothing of him since.

The gags used to prevent their screaming had become more subtle and precise, the ties that secured them to the beams more elaborate and sure, their imprisonment longer, their deaths ever more horrifying.

But Father Lacombe, under the combined power of his Quietistic fanaticism, poor health, bitter persecutions, and relentless imprisonment, lost the balance of his mind altogether, and died.

Wanting to reward many nobles and knights who had been released from their imprisonment, he gave them over in matrimony to maidens of high station, all of them servants of the empress and the princess, and he also gave them large estates so they could live out their lives honorably.