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internment

UK/ɪnˈtɜːnmənt/US/ɪnˈtɝnmənt/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,589 of 15,258leans written

Internment is the holding of people without trial in wartime. A policy of internment.

It is not punishment in law but detention, which is the argument used to justify it. Internment has produced more recruits for whatever it was meant to stop than almost any other policy.

Unknown · Public domain

Definitions of internment

  1. 1nouninternmentThe holding of people without trial in wartime.C1

    “The internment lasted four years and covered about twenty thousand people.”

internment is a detention.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    internus — within, internal

  2. French

    interner

  3. English

    intern

  4. English, today

    internment

Built from

  • interne · Latin — inner, internal

From intern + -ment. intern comes from French interner, from interne (“inner, internal”), from Latin internus (“within, internal”), compare Etymology 2.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

internment in the wild

  • German and Italian Americans who were sent to internment camps during the war were sent under the provisions of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

    Executive Order 9066

  • The implementation of internment developed in stages, progressing from asset restriction measures to large-scale removal and incarceration.

    Internment of Japanese Americans

  • Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps or concentration camps.

    Internment

  • The proceeds of these sales were used to pay for their basic needs of the internees during the internment.

    Internment of Japanese Canadians

  • The introduction of internment, the way the arrests were carried out, and the abuse of those arrested, led to mass protests and a sharp increase in violence.

    Operation Demetrius

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the interne family

interninternship

internment — used about once every 9,395 pages · #11,589 · point at the bar for the others