prisoner's base
- noun
- Baby Talk
:
la base del prisionero
- We played prisoner's base in the park yesterday.
Examples
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The children played prisoner's base in the park all afternoon.
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She remembered playing prisoner's base with her friends every summer during her childhood.
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When it started to rain, the group reluctantly abandoned their game of prisoner's base.
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Did you ever play prisoner's base as a child?
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The children gathered in the park to play prisoner's base, eagerly trying to tag the other team.
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During recess, the students organized into two teams to play prisoner's base, running and laughing as they tried to capture their opponents.
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At summer camp, we spent hours playing prisoner's base, running back and forth between bases and cheering each other on.
Surface Forms
Morphology
prisoner's + base
The words 'prisoner(s)' and 'base' provide a clear thematic clue (a place associated with prisoners or holding/capturing), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents could infer the expression involves capturing or bringing opponents to a base. However, the conventionalized meaning — a specific children's team game with rules about tagging and returning captured players — is culturally specific and not fully predictable from the parts, making it only partially transparent.
Etymology
Prisoner's base comes from a simple picture: one team tags opponents and brings them to their base to hold them like prisoners. So the name explains the game — teams try to capture and keep players at their base.
