Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The withholding of property from its rightful owner.
  • noun The holding of a person in custody, especially under a writ authorizing continued custody for the purposes of making the person available to other authorities to answer other charges.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who withholds; one who detains, stops, or prevents from proceeding.
  • noun In law:
  • noun In law, the fact of being detained or held in custody: as, a writ of habeas corpus may issue to inquire into the detainer of a prisoner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who detains.
  • noun The keeping possession of what belongs to another; detention of what is another's, even though the original taking may have been lawful. Forcible detainer is indictable at common law.
  • noun A writ authorizing the keeper of a prison to continue to keep a person in custody.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun law The right to keep a person, or a person's goods or property, against his will. A type of custody.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From detain +‎ -er.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word detainer.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.