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Incarceration vs Imprisonment - What's the difference?

incarceration | imprisonment |

As nouns the difference between incarceration and imprisonment

is that incarceration is the act of confining, or the state of being confined; imprisonment while imprisonment is a confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, as punishment for a crime.

incarceration

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • The act of confining, or the state of being confined; imprisonment.
  • Formerly, strangulation, as in hernia.
  • A constriction of the hernial sac, rendering it irreducible, but not great enough to cause strangulation.

    • Related terms

    * incarcerate

    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