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ng wretched; wretched; unhappy. "This sad and calamitous condition." South. "A calamitous prison" Milton.

An inclosure; a boundary; a limit. [Obs.] A prison is but a retirement, and opportunity of serious thoughts, to a person whose spirit . . . desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body. Jer. Taylor.

To take prisoner; to capture; to subdue. [Obs.] Their woes whom fortune captivates. Shak.

A prisoner taken by force or stratagem, esp., by an enemy, in war; one kept in bondage or in the power of another. Then, when I am thy captive, talk of chains. Milton.

The state of being a captive or a prisoner. More celebrated in his captivity that in his greatest triumphs. Dryden.

One who captures any person or thing, as a prisoner or a prize.

Prison fees. [Obs.]

Belonging a prison. [R.] Foxe.

An agreement between belligerents for the exchange of prisoners. Wilhelm.

A very small and close apartment, as in a prison or in a monastery or convent; the hut of a hermit. The heroic confessor in his cell. Macaulay.

The voluntary surrender of a person's effects to his creditors to avoid imprisonment.

A place of worship not connected with a church; as, the chapel of a palace, hospital, or prison.

To cause to sound with a clank; as, the prisoners clank their chains.

Obs.] Lam. ii. 15. To clap hold of, to seize roughly or quickly. -- To clap up. (a) To imprison hastily or without due formality. (b) To make or contrive hastily. [Obs.] "Was ever match clapped up so suddenly" Shak.

Narrow; confined; as, a close alley; close quarters. "A close prison." Dickens.

That which incloses or confines; an inclosure. O thou bloody prison . . . Within the guilty closure of thy walls Richard the Second here was hacked to death. Shak.

To put in charge of a jailor; to imprison. These two were commited. Clarendon.

iting, or putting in charge, keeping, or trust; consigment; esp., the act of commiting to prison. They were glad to compound for his bare commitment to the Tower, whence he was within few days enlarged. Clarendon.

rdoning power of the State; as, the commutation of a sentence of death to banishment or imprisonment. Suits are allowable in the spiritual courts for money agreed to be given as a commutation for penance. Blackstone.

aggregate; hence; to lessen; to diminish; as, to commute a sentence of death to one of imprisonment for life; to commute tithes; to commute charges for fares. The sounds water and fire, being once annexed to those two elements, it was certainly more natural to call beings participating of the first "watery", and the l…