dungeon.

A dark prison or confinement chamber, usually underground or beneath a fortified building.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• castle dungeon
• underground dungeon
• dungeon cell

On the page

Water dripped into the dungeon from a crack above the barred door.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Singular dungeon; plural dungeons. Commonness: common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Dark usually underground prison or vault; older donjon cross-reference also recorded. Cambridge count noun underground prison read. Individual writer usefulness checked for a distinct physical, ritual, facial or acoustic function. Definitions/examples are original; genre suitability is not an inherent emotional rating. Writing functions: precise physical or ritual description, gothic scene construction.