prisoner Hear it!

prisoner Definition

pris·oner (priz′nər, priz′ən ər)

noun

  1. a person confined in prison, as for some crime
  2. a person held in custody
  3. a person captured or held captive: often in metaphorical usage a prisoner of love

Etymology: ME < OFr prisonier

prisoner Synonyms

prisoner

n.

captive, convict, culprit, inmate, jailbird*, detainee, the legally retarded, escapee, hostage, con*; see also defendant.

prisoner Usage Examples

Preposition: on

  • remand: Show answer Problem scenario - please discuss this with your colleagues D, aged 30, was a prisoner on remand.

Adjective modifier

  • Iraqi: The US is proposing itself to try Iraqi prisoners for war crimes committed against its own troops.
  • republican: And on 3 October 1973, 60 republican prisoners won special political status from the Dublin government after 20 days of hunger strike.
  • Soviet: It gave details of families of Soviet political prisoners who needed support.
  • political: I'm Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba.
  • fellow: Would it be a shank in his side from a fellow prisoner?

Modifies a noun

  • re-offend: He said that currently about three in five prisoners re-offend, which costs an estimated £ 11 billion a year.

Converse of object

  • convict: How to arrange a visit If the person you are visiting is a convicted prisoner they will need to send you a Visiting Order.
  • rehabilitate: The speech did not, however, set out clear thinking on how an expanded prison regime can rehabilitate prisoners.
  • detain: As a result, the detained prisoners were sent to Kuching on board a local steamship.
  • condemn: The humble Petition of Christofer Love, a condemned Prisoner in the Tower of London, was this Day read.

Noun used with modifier

  • remand: Can I register if I am a remand prisoner?
  • IRA: Frank Maguire had once been OC of the IRA prisoners in Crumlin Road jail.

Possessives

  • dilemma: In chapter 4, mobile individuals again face the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Preposition: in

  • jail: All of the speakers had been long-term prisoners in British jails in Ireland or England or were their relatives.
  • custody: It is a highly structured regime, in the interests of efficiency and of the secure retention of the prisoners in custody.

Preposition: of

  • conscience: Wherever there are prisons, there are prisoners of conscience.
  • war: I've been working like a Japanese prisoner of war.
  • camp: After he traveled to Malta in 1943, he painted the liberated Belsen concentration camp and Japanese prisoner of war camps in Singapore.
prisoner Quotes

Il tournait dans son de¤  sir, comme un prisonnier dans son cachot. He was circling in his desire, like a prisoner in his dungeon.

—Flaubert, Gustave

Come sleep,O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

—Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway

We are beginning to see now it is matter is the scaffolding of spirit; that the poet emerges from morphemes and phonemes; that as form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind's tooling.

—Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)

   I don't mind your being killed, but I object to your being taken prisoner.

—Herbert, 1st Earl