prisons

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of prison.

   Reformers toured the country's prisons to report on conditions inside.

   Two prisons in the region were destroyed by fire during the riots.

   Note

   Only the countable uses of the noun make a plural. You can tour several prisons, or call a harsh school and a strict home two prisons of a kind. The sense of confinement itself (sent to prison, years in prison) has no plural form. The same spelling also serves the verb meaning "imprisons", so in "fear prisons the mind" the word is a verb, not a noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of prison.

   Note

   This verb always needs an object. Someone or something is the one confined, and the word never stands alone the way "waits" or "sleeps" can. Its meaning is exactly "to imprison", so the two verbs can trade places in a sentence without any change in sense. Prison is simply the shorter member of the pair, and it shares its spelling with the plural noun.

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