captivity.

The state of being held or confined by another person or controlling power.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• prolonged captivity
• escape captivity

On the page

In captivity, she learned to measure the hours by the pipes cooling overhead.

He had imagined escape so often that captivity began to feel less real than the plan.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror. Forms: Singular captivity; plural captivities. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.