SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does solitary confinement mean? 

• SOLITARY CONFINEMENT (noun)
  The noun SOLITARY CONFINEMENT has 1 sense:

1. confinement of a prisoner in isolation from other prisoners

  Familiarity information: SOLITARY CONFINEMENT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SOLITARY CONFINEMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Confinement of a prisoner in isolation from other prisoners

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

solitary; solitary confinement

Context example:

he was held in solitary

Hypernyms ("solitary confinement" is a kind of...):

confinement (the state of being confined)

 Context examples 

The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

On the commission he is, at any rate, said I. And he writes to me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents—which, you know, is by solitary confinement.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)