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To keep back or from; to withhold. Detain not the wages of the hireling. Jer. Taylor.

A writ. See Detinue.

One who detains.

Detention. [R.] Blackstone.

ing; advancing from childhood to maturity. Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong, Detain their adolescent charge too long. Cowper.

rnishing durable timber, mostly natives of the West Indies. -- To hold by the button, to detain in conversation to weariness; to bore; to buttonhole.

To hold at the button or buttonhole; to detain in conversation to weariness; to bore; as, he buttonholed me a quarter of an hour.

To retard; to stop, detain, or hinder, for a time; to retard the motion, or time of arrival, of; as, the mail is delayed by a heavy fall of snow. Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed The huddling brook to hear his madrigal. Milton.

The act of detaining or keeping back; a withholding.

A person or thing detained; (Law)

To disinherit; to cut off, or detain, from the possession or enjoyment of an inheritance. [Obs.] Spenser.

To lay an embargo on and thus detain; to prohibit from leaving port; -- said of ships, also of commerce and goods.

To seize and detain by law, as goods. [Obs.] Ayliffe.

nd imprisonment of a person without warrant or cause, or contrary to law; or the unlawful detaining of a person in custody. -- False keel (Naut.), the timber below the main keel, used to serve both as a protection and to increase the shio's lateral resistance. -- False key, a picklock. -- False leg. (Zoöl.) See Prol…

abduction. In embraces of King James . . . forcible and unjust. Swift. Forcible entry and detainer (Law), the entering upon and taking and withholding of land and tenements by actual force and violence, and with a strong hand, to the hindrance of the person having the right to enter.

Something hard to be caught or detained. Or Catch that airy fugitive called wit. Harte. Fugitive from justice (Law), one who, having committed a crime in one jurisdiction, flees or escapes into another to avoid punishment.

position. Fully committed (Law), committed to prison for trial, in distinction from being detained for examination.

f argument, or to account for a fact or an occurrence; as, the hypothesis that head winds detain an overdue steamer. An hypothesis being a mere supposition, there are no other limits to hypotheses than those of the human imagination. J. S. Mill.

To put in prison or jail; To arrest and detain in custody; to confine. He imprisoned was in chains remediles. Spenser.

mprisonment, whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by foreibly detaining one in the public streets. Blackstone. False imprisonment. (Law) See under False.