detention
Pluraldetentions
- 1A school punishment requiring a student to report to a set room during recess or after hours to do schoolwork or busywork.
Two students received detention for skipping the morning assembly.
He served his detention in the library, copying out chapters from the textbook.
Note
The schoolroom version of temporary confinement, mild enough to be a routine threat. Students get detention, serve it, and are stuck in it, a phrase that captures how it feels from the inside. It runs as a mass noun (a week of detention) and as a count noun (three detentions this term), so both a detention and detention are correct.
- 2The act of holding someone in custody, or the state of being held and prevented from leaving.
The detention of suspects without charge drew sharp public criticism.
His detention at the border lasted three days before he was released.
Similarcustody, confinement, imprisonment, incarceration, internment
Oppositerelease, freedom, liberty, liberation
Note
The root sense, borrowed through Middle French détention from Latin detentio, and simply detain + -tion. It is not only about people. Railway writing uses it for holding up freight and trains: wagons kept waiting at the docks in Railway Magazine (1945), or the 10:05 p.m. express held at Exeter for sixteen minutes in 1841. In this general sense it is uncountable, so you write a minimum of detention, not a detention.
- 3The confinement of a person in custody while awaiting trial.
The court extended his detention pending the outcome of the investigation.
Pretrial detention can last months in jurisdictions with crowded courts.
Similarcustody, remand, confinement, imprisonment, incarceration
Note
In law the word marks a stage rather than a sentence. It means custody before trial, as distinct from imprisonment imposed after conviction. Its usual companion is pretrial, and it works as both a count and a mass noun: a lawyer may challenge a detention or speak of detention in general. Being temporary is the point, and that is what it shares with the school punishment.
- 4Physical control over a thing without the mental intent that the law requires to constitute legal possession.
A tenant's detention of the apartment grants use but never legal possession.
Mere detention of goods by a custodian does not transfer any ownership right.
Similarcustody
Note
Civil law divides holding a thing into two layers: physical control and the will to have it as one's own. Detention is the first layer alone. A tenant, borrower or custodian keeps a thing for someone else and so detains it without possessing it. Unlike the everyday sense of holding back, nothing here is withheld. The holder simply lacks the intent that would turn control into possession.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Middle French détention, from Latin detentio, detentionem. It is equivalent to "detain" plus "-tion."