as in captive
one that has been taken and held in confinement
the prisoners were fed only bread and water twice a day
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Recent Examples of prisoner
Authorities believe Jefferson Lewis — a 47-year-old recently released prisoner with a history of domestic violence convictions, per Australian news outlets the Sydney Morning Herald and 7 News — may be able to help with their enquiries.
—
Latoya Gayle, PEOPLE, 27 Apr. 2026
So too did the titular Joe Turner, the brother of Tennessee Governor Pete Turner and a man responsible for taking prisoners from Memphis to Nashville, but who often sold them into a kind of neo-slavery on cotton plantations along the Mississippi River.
—Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 26 Apr. 2026
Syrian authorities on Friday arrested Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades executing dozens of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon during the country’s civil war.
—ABC News, 26 Apr. 2026
The overnight attacks followed a prisoner swap Friday, in which Russia and Ukraine exchanged 193 service members.
—Elise Morton, Arkansas Online, 26 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for prisoner
Latoya Gayle, PEOPLE, 27 Apr. 2026
So too did the titular Joe Turner, the brother of Tennessee Governor Pete Turner and a man responsible for taking prisoners from Memphis to Nashville, but who often sold them into a kind of neo-slavery on cotton plantations along the Mississippi River.
—Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 26 Apr. 2026
Syrian authorities on Friday arrested Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades executing dozens of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon during the country’s civil war.
—ABC News, 26 Apr. 2026
The overnight attacks followed a prisoner swap Friday, in which Russia and Ukraine exchanged 193 service members.
—Elise Morton, Arkansas Online, 26 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for prisoner
Recent Examples of Synonyms for prisoner
Noun
-
Sports franchises everywhere can be tacky, rapacious, incompetent, extortionate, and otherwise exploitative, but only because their customers, the fans, are essentially captives.—
Zach Helfand,
New Yorker,
23 Apr. 2026
-
The ministry identified the freed captives as Russian citizen Oleg Gret and Ukrainian citizen Yuri Yurov.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
22 Apr. 2026
Noun
-
Its capture marked a significant symbolic victory for the junta and its Russian allies.—
Wilson Mcmakin,
Los Angeles Times,
26 Apr. 2026
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Now, is that the same as a soldier betting on the capture of a vicious dictator?—
Zach Dean OutKick,
FOXNews.com,
24 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Prisoner.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/prisoner. Accessed 2 May. 2026.
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