Other forms: incarcerated, incarcerating, incarcerates
To incarcerate is to shut somebody up in prison. Incarcerate the offender.
It is the formal word and belongs to law and to argument about prisons. The Latin behind it is a prison, which also gives the word cancel by a long route.
1verbincarcerateTo shut somebody up in prison.
“It costs more to incarcerate somebody for a year than to send them to school.”
incarcerate is an imprisoning.
Medieval Latin incarcerare comes from carcer, a prison.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- (turn)
Latin
in- — in
Medieval Latin
incarcerātus
English, today
incarcerate
Built from
The adjective is first attested in 1528, the verb in 1575; Medieval Latin incarcerātus, perfect passive participle of incarcerō (“to imprison”) (see -ate and -ate), from Latin in- (“in”) + carcer (“a prison”) + -ō. Common participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA