imprisoned
part of speech
past tense and past participle of imprison (imprison, imprisons, imprisoned, imprisoning); adjective (imprisoned)
meaning for a pupil
1) Put in prison as a punishment, or kept in prison. tree →
2) Kept somewhere and not able to get out, like a trapped animal or a princess in a tower. tree →
3) (figurative) Unable to escape a feeling or situation: «imprisoned by fear». tree →
sense in the lessons
In history and stories people are imprisoned for crimes, or unfairly for their beliefs; in the Bible Joseph and Paul were imprisoned. In ethics lessons pupils discuss fair punishment and people imprisoned for speaking up. Phrases: «be imprisoned for», «wrongly imprisoned», «imprisoned in a tower».
examples
- The thief was imprisoned for two years. tree →
- Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, though he had done nothing wrong. tree →
- The princess was imprisoned in a high tower. tree →
- Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for a very long time before becoming president. tree →
- The bird felt imprisoned in its small cage. tree →
- Paul wrote letters while he was imprisoned. tree →
- ‘Ah! cruel Queen! what have I ever done to be imprisoned like this? tree →
note
Regular verb: imprison, imprisoned. Noun: imprisonment. Usually passive: «He was imprisoned.» Similar: jailed, locked up (informal).
In the corpora
- Paul travelled across the Roman world starting churches, and was shipwrecked, beaten and imprisoned.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «imprisoned» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.