confinement

Etymology

It is borrowed from French confinement, recorded in French from the 16th century,^[2][3][4] from confiner (“to border; to shut up, enclose”) and the suffix -ment.^[2][5][6] The Shorter Oxford and Dictionary.com instead treat it as formed in English from the verb confine and -ment, comparing the French word.^[7][8] Etymonline notes that the Old French noun was confinacion.^[3] The French verb comes, according to the OED, from Italian confinare (“to border upon, set limits to, banish”), from confino (“bordering”), from Latin confīnis (“bordering, having common bounds”),^[2] a compound of con- (“together”) and fīnis (“end, limit, boundary”);^[2] Etymonline derives it from the noun confins or from Medieval Latin confīnō (“to border on, set bounds”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of confining, or the state of being shut up or kept in one place; imprisonment: 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.^[2][9] Etymonline dates the word to the 1620s, and Merriam-Webster gives 1592 as its first known use.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

From the general sense of restraint the word soon passed to restriction or limitation to certain conditions (1678);^[2][9] a 17th-century sense "an obligation, a personal tie" did not last.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as imprisonment, incarceration or restraint of liberty, quoting Dryden and Addison.^[10] From 1774 it was used for a woman's lying-in at childbirth,^[2][3] perhaps as a euphemism for childbed;^[3] the Middle English expression had been Our Lady's bands.^[3] The phrase to be confined, to be kept at home or in bed by sickness or childbirth, is recorded from 1772.^[3] The childbirth sense is now labelled dated.^[11] In military use confinement is imprisonment in a guardhouse while awaiting trial or as a punishment,^[8] and in physics it is another name for containment.^[12]

Timeline

• 1646 – the state of being confined; imprisonment.^[2]
• 1649 – a restriction or limit (rare, obsolete).^[2][9]
• 1656 – an obligation, a personal tie (obsolete).^[2]
• 1678 – restriction or limitation to certain conditions.^[2]
• 1774 – lying-in, childbirth.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of confining, or the state of being confined, especially in a prison or other place one may not leave: The prisoners spent six weeks in confinement.^[12][5][8]
2. solitary confinement: the keeping of a prisoner alone in a cell.^[7][8]
3. Restraint within doors by illness.^[5]
4. (dated) The period of childbirth, from the onset of labour to the birth; lying-in.^[12][11][5]
5. (military) Imprisonment in a guardhouse while awaiting trial or as a punishment.^[8]
6. (physics) Another name for containment.^[12]

Word family

• nonconfinement
• postconfinement
• preconfinement
• self-confinement
• solitary confinement

Related words

• confine
• confines
• fine
• final
• finish
• define

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins