lockdown
Plurallockdowns
- 1The confinement of people to their rooms, cells, homes, or surrounding areas, imposed as a security measure during a disturbance or as a public-health response in a pandemic.
The prison remained under lockdown for two days after the fight in the yard.
Office workers across the city learned to work from home under the new lockdown orders.
Similarconfinement, quarantine, curfew, shutdown
Note
A noun formed from the phrasal verb lock down. The noun is written solid while the verb stays two words: they locked down the city, but the city went into lockdown. It is a mass noun in phrases like under lockdown and a count noun for a single episode, as in the first coronavirus lockdown. It also works as a modifier, as in lockdown restrictions.
- 2A fastening device used to bind logs together when they are floated as a raft.
The raftsmen drove the lockdown tight before pushing off into the current.
Each crew carried spare lockdowns in case one split while the raft was out on the river.
Note
An American river-trade term with nothing to do with security. Timber rafts were built as strings of logs held by poles laid across them, and each log was pinned to the poles with wooden pegs and lockdowns. The fastener takes its name from the same verb as the confinement meaning, used literally: it locks the timber down. Iowa Studies in Business (1931) describes rafts built this way.
Practice
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Origin
This word is formed from the verb phrase "lock down."