house of detention
1
7.7
- noun
- /haʊs əv dɪˈtɛnʃən/
- Formal
:
casa de detención
- After the judge's ruling, the young offender was sent to a house of detention until his trial.
Examples
-
The local house of detention provides educational programs to help rehabilitate its residents.
-
You ever been in a house of detention, Helen?
-
Send my credentials to the house of detention.
Fiction book (1991) -
Well, the women's house of detention was not maximum security.
-
They have more stuff in the house of detention than they do out here.
-
I think we may have spoken many years ago when I was a kid and you were in the women's house of detention.
-
♫ I'm gonna stick him in the house of detention" ♫
-
The teenager was placed in a house of detention for committing a series of minor offenses.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A building where people are kept as punishment or while waiting for trial
∞
1.0
A building where people are kept as punishment or while waiting for their trial
42
4.1
A building where police keep people who are waiting for trial or serving a sentence
40
5.5
A small room in a police station where police keep people temporarily
36
4.6
A place where people are kept for a short time, like prisoners or migrants, while their case is decided
26
5.3
A camp where guards keep people against their will, often during war
15
6.3
A locked place where young people who break the law are kept
10
4.2
A building like a prison where people are kept as punishment and given training
5
9.9
A jail or prison where people go when they break the law
2
4.9
A place where people who broke the law are kept as punishment or while they wait for trial
1
6.5
A place where young people who have broken the law stay temporarily under court supervision
1
6.2
A place where young people who broke the law stay temporarily under court care
1
4.6
A building where people are held as punishment or while waiting for trial
1
9.8
A place where people were kept for minor crimes in the past
1
6.0
A building that holds people as punishment for crimes to protect the public
A place where authorities keep young people for a short time after breaking the law
Antonyms
How Secure
- Specialized
12
7.9
∞
1.0
42
4.1
- Formal
1
7.7
33
4.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is compositionally derived from 'house' (a building) + 'of' + 'detention' (being kept in custody), so a learner who knows the constituents can infer it denotes a building used for detention. This is a regular, cross-linguistic institutional naming pattern (e.g. 'house of ...'), making the expression predictable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The noun house of detention comes from the simple image of a house where people were kept in detention while they waited for court. So, the phrase means 'a place where people are held temporarily' before their hearing.