Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To keep from proceeding; delay or retard.
- v. To keep in custody or temporary confinement: The police detained several suspects for questioning. The disruptive students were detained after school until their parents had been notified.
- v. Obsolete To retain or withhold (payment or property, for example).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To keep back or away; withhold; specifically, to keep or retain unjustly.
- To keep or restrain from proceeding; stay or stop: as, we were detained by the rain.
- In law, to hold in custody. Synonyms To retard, delay, hinder, cheek, retain.
- n. Detention.
Wiktionary
- v. Keep (someone) from proceeding by holding them back or making claims on their attention.
- v. transitive To put under custody.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To keep back or from; to withhold.
- v. To restrain from proceeding; to stay or stop; to delay.
- v. To hold or keep in custody.
- n. obsolete Detention.
WordNet 3.0
- v. deprive of freedom; take into confinement
- v. stop or halt
- v. cause to be slowed down or delayed
Etymologies
- Middle English deteinen, from Old French detenir, from Vulgar Latin *dētenīre, from Latin dētinēre : dē-, de- + tenēre, to hold; see ten- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Please note that the position of the Bush-Cheney cabal has been that anybody they detain is * not* a POW, but a, well, ... ah, ‘terrorist’, in a ..... well, not a war, except as they say itis.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Lawyers, Treason, and Deception: A Response to Andrew McCarthy
“Even if the initial decision to detain is legally valid, for how long should detention last?”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Melded Approaches to Terrorism Detention and Trials
“Over the past eight years, we have seen the government over and over again detain men as “terrorists,” only to discover later that the evidence was weak, wrong or nonexistent.”
Think Progress » Santorum excuses Graham’s anti-Muslim comments, calls them ‘reasonable.’
“And yet Judge Luttig brushes this language aside, seizing upon a different sentence in the Endo opinion: The fact that the Act and the [executive] orders are silent on detention does not of course mean that any power to detain is lacking.”
“The Bush Administration has loudly proclaimed that giving it unchecked authority to arrest and detain is the surest way to victory in the War on Terror.”
“The fact that the Act and the orders are silent on detention does not of course mean that any power to detain is lacking.”
“There's something temporary about the word "detain" -- as in "detained for questioning.”
Russ Wellen: The Careless, Corrupt Program That Begat Preventive Detention and Torture
“Indian policemen detain a kashmiri protestor during a protest in Srinagar,”
“Though I doubt the Phoenix police department has such little work that they just will sit and "detain" every single Hispanic they see, being detained is not as horrible as your making it out to be.”
“As we all know, they have the power to 'detain' someone for 30 minutes until a Constable, who enjoys the power of arrest, arrives.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘detain’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...Odysseus, sea, Athene, goddess, land, Achaean, wind, wave, Ithaca, lead, Poseidon, mortal and 732 more...
-
If it ain't broke
paint, quaint, maintop, saint, faint, dainty, ain't, unacquainted, the rain in Spain..., ruzuzutainment, 1 Mountain Artill..., Ukraine and 81 more...
-
Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 997 more...
-
my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
-
verbs
deprecate, behold, bemoan, circumscribe, circumspect, pivot, discombobulate, rummage, chasten, chastise, undulate, snog and 122 more...
-
Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2014 more...
-
ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
-
useful vocab
pysmatic, relentless, storge, preamble, oscillate, itinerary, frolic, frolicsome, abdicate, frolicking, divergent, abnegate and 312 more...
-
Tainted Love
The -tain verbs. The fascinating thing with these is that we have most of the family in English yet not the daddy of them, which would be a verb derived from the Latin tenere 'to hold'. We have a c...
maintain, contain, pertain, ascertain, obtain, detain, abstain, retain, entertain, sustain
Tweets
Looking for tweets for detain.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.