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Incarcerate vs Imprisonment - What's the difference?

incarcerate | imprisonment |

As a verb incarcerate

is to lock away; to imprison, especially for breaking the law.

As a noun imprisonment is

a confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, as punishment for a crime.

incarcerate

English

Verb

(incarcerat)
  • To lock away; to imprison, especially for breaking the law.
  • * 2013 September 23, Masha Gessen, " Life in a Russian Prison," New York Times (retrieved 24 September 2013):
  • Tolokonnikova has also been an effective public speaker even while incarcerated , but she has spoken out on politics and freedom in general rather than prisoners’ rights.
  • To confine; to shut up or enclose; to hem in.
  • Usage notes

    As a Latinate term, somewhat formal, compared to imprison.

    Synonyms

    * imprison * jail

    Derived terms

    * incarceration

    imprisonment

    English

    Alternative forms

    * emprisonment (obsolete)

    Noun

  • A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, as punishment for a crime.
  • * Spenser
  • His sinews waxen weak and raw / Through long imprisonment and hard constraint.
  • * Blackstone
  • Every confinement of the person is an imprisonment , whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.
  • * (Sir Walter Raleigh)
  • Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments , tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these forenamed kings