imprisonment
/ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/noun
imprisonment is spelled I-M-P-R-I-S-O-N-M-E-N-T. The wrong spelling people search most is inprisonment: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 11 of all searches for the word. Imprisonment is a noun meaning “A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime”. The plural of imprisonment is imprisonments.
How many letters and syllables are in imprisonment?
| Letters | 12: I-M-P-R-I-S-O-N-M-E-N-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 7.8 times per million words; the 8,417th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, inprisonment, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell imprisonment?
Imprisonment is spelled I-M-P-R-I-S-O-N-M-E-N-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 11 of the searches for imprisonment in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is imprisonment?
Imprisonment appears 7.8 times per million words in written English, the 8,417th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce imprisonment?
- UK /ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/
Imprisonment has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-imprisonment.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of imprisonment
- imprisonments plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does imprisonment mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, especially as punishment for a crime.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Imprisonment in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense confinement:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | emprisonnement |
| German | Gefangenschaft, Haft |
| Portuguese | aprisionamento |
| Spanish | aprisionamiento |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does imprisonment come from?
From Anglo-Norman emprisonement, from Old French emprisonnement. See imprison + -ment.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).