Prison

PRISON, noun priz'n. [Latin prendo.]

1. In a general sense, any place of confinement or involuntary restraint; but appropriately, a public building for the confinement or safe custody of debtors and criminals committed by process of law; a jail. Originally, a prison as Lord Coke observes, was only a place of safe custody; but it is now employed as a place of punishment. We have state-prisons, for the confinement of criminals by way of punishment.

2. Any place of confinement or restraint.

The tyrant Aeolus,

With power imperial curbs the struggling winds,

And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds.