incarcerate

verb in·car·cer·ate \ in-ˈkär-sə-ˌrāt \

|Updated on: 14 Jun 2018

Examples: incarcerate in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of incarcerate

incarcerated; incarcerating

transitive verb

1 : to put in prison

2 : to subject to confinement

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incarceration

play \(ˌ)in-ˌkär-sə-ˈrā-shən\ noun

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Examples of incarcerate in a Sentence

the state incarcerated over 1900 people last year

Recent Examples of incarcerate from the Web

And though the president was willing to release Johnson, there are hundreds of people who have been incarcerated for life in the federal prison system for drug offenses who likely won’t be so fortunate.

— p.r. lockhart, Vox, "Trump commuted Alice Johnson’s sentence. Thousands of people like her are still behind bars.," 7 June 2018
Less than two months after Lamonte McIntyre’s conviction was overturned, a federal judge ordered the release of Gregory Orozco, who had been incarcerated on drug charges.

— michael harriot, The Root, "‘Evilest White Woman on Earth’: The Criminal Injustice of Terra Morehead," 6 June 2018
In 2014, Avila started a cleaning company whose 17 employees are all people who have been incarcerated.

— tara bahrampour, Washington Post, "Locked up for years as teens, they’ve returned home to D.C. hoping to make a difference," 5 June 2018
The best option, by far, seemed to be people who were incarcerated.

— New York Times, "The Ideal Subjects for a Salt Study? Maybe Prisoners," 4 June 2018
Among black people, the latest jobs tally found the unemployment rate to be nearly twice that of whites; for people with disabilities and those who have been incarcerated, unemployment and poverty are widespread.

— livia gershon, Longreads, "The Prosperity Plea," 30 May 2018
But for people who are incarcerated or detained, having to wear the same outfit as your peers has always been a standard.

— refinery29.com, "How Japanese Women At Internment Camp Made Their Clothes Their Own," 25 May 2018
The gang was also able to control street crime by using wives, girlfriends and lawyers to help relay orders to be carried out by members who were not incarcerated, an indictment said.

— crimesider staff, CBS News, "Feds: Mexican Mafia runs California jails like an "illegal government"," 24 May 2018
As a 10 term U.S. representative from the Silicon Valley, Mineta kept his ego in check while passing seminal legislation, notably a bill granting reparations to Japanese Americans like his family who were incarcerated during World War II.

— ruthe stein, San Francisco Chronicle, "Norman Mineta speaks out at opening night film of S.F. Asian American CAAMFest," 11 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'incarcerate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

A criminal sentenced to incarceration may wish his or her debt to society could be canceled, but such a wistful felon might be surprised to learn that incarcerate and cancel are related. Incarcerate comes from incarcerare, a Latin verb meaning "to imprison." That Latin root comes from carcer, Latin for prison. Etymologists think that cancel probably got its start when the spelling of carcer was modified to cancer, which means "lattice" in Latin-an early meaning of cancel in English was "to mark (a passage) for deletion with lines crossed like a lattice." Aside from its literal meaning, incarcerate can also have a figurative application meaning "to subject to confinement," as in "people who are incarcerated in their obsessions."