incarceration
- 1The act of confining someone, or the condition of being confined, especially in prison.
The judge ordered his incarceration pending trial.
Long-term incarceration can have lasting effects on a person's mental health.
Similarimprisonment, confinement, detention
Note
This is chiefly an American word, borrowed from Medieval Latin incarcerātiō. It usually puts the jailer in the possessive and the prisoner after of, as in John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened (2020): "Turkey's incarceration of Pastor Andrew Brunson." It works as a mass noun for the condition and as a count noun for separate spells, so one person can undergo several incarcerations.
- 2Constriction of the hernial sac that makes the hernia impossible to push back, but not severe enough to cut off its blood supply.
The radiologist noted incarceration of the inguinal hernia on the scan.
Without prompt treatment, incarceration can later progress to strangulation.
- 3Strangulation of a hernia, in which the trapped tissue loses its blood supply.
The physician recorded incarceration of the hernia, the blood supply having failed entirely.
By morning, incarceration had left the trapped bowel dark and lifeless.
Similarstrangulation
Note
Older surgical writing let the word cover the whole emergency: a hernia trapped so tightly that its tissue lost its blood supply. Clinical usage now splits that ground. Strangulation names the loss of blood supply, and incarceration is kept for the merely irreducible hernia. In an older case note the word may mean the graver condition. In a current report, the two terms name different stages.
Practice
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Origin
This word comes from the Medieval Latin word incarcerātiō.