Custody is who has legal charge of someone. In the news it does two very different jobs: a suspect held at a police station, and a parent with the right to look after a child after a divorce.
The police sense lives inside fixed phrases — taken into custody, held in custody, remanded in custody — and all of them mean locked up and not free to leave. The family sense brings its own vocabulary: joint custody, sole custody, custody of the children, a custody battle. There is a third and quieter use for things rather than people: a museum has custody of a manuscript, meaning it keeps the thing and answers for it. Custody is only ever a noun, so you take, get, have or lose custody, and nobody custodies anything. The person doing the keeping is a custodian, which in a school or an office block often just means the caretaker.
1nouncustodyThe state of being held by the police and not free to leave.~56%
“Two men are in custody after the break-in.”
synonyms: detention, confinement
2nounrightThe legal right and duty to look after a child.~33%
“She was given custody of both children after the divorce.”
3nounsafekeepingThe job of keeping something safe and being answerable for it.~11%
“The letters are in the custody of the national archive.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
custody is a legal arrangement.
Custody is Latin custodia, which meant a keeping, a watch, a guard — and a prison. Behind it stands the custos, the watchman: the one who stands over a thing and answers for it. Both modern senses are still that same watchman, once at a cell door and once at the school gate.
Latin
custōdia — a keeping, watch, guard, prison
English, today
custody
Built from
Latin custōdia (“a keeping, watch, guard, prison”), from custōs (“a keeper, watchman, guard”). a doublet of custode.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA