Emily Dickinson Lexicon

PRIS-ON, n. [priz'n; Fr. from pris, taken, from prendre, to take, L. prendo; Sp. prision; Arm. prisoun.]

1. In a general sense, any place of confinement, or involuntary restraint; but appropriately, a public building for the confinement or safe custody of debtors and criminals confined by process of law; a jail. Originally, a prison, as Lord Coke observes, was only a place of safe custody; but it is now employed as a place of punishment. We have state-prisons, for the confinement of criminals by way of punishment.
2. Any place of confinement or restraint. The tyrant Æolus, / With power imperial curbs the struggling winds, / And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds. – Dryden.
3. In Scripture, a low, obscure, afflicted condition. – Eccles. iv.
4. The cave where David was confined. – Ps. cxlii.
5. A state of spiritual bondage. – Is. xlii.