Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Confinement of a criminal to his or her own residence, usually under a condition of electronic monitoring or other surveillance, imposed by a court as a more lenient alternative to imprisonment.
  • noun Confinement of a political activist to his or her own residence, usually under a condition of limited outside communication, imposed by an oppressive regime as a means of reducing the activist's effectiveness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun law The situation where a person is confined, by the authorities, to his or her residence, possibly with travel allowed but restricted. Used as a lenient alternative to prison time.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun confinement to your own home

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Sirasa reports that Dayananda Dissanayake, the election commissioner has been placed under house arrest, BBC reports its worse - but no one really knows … Surely one thing is for sure; parents won't send their kids to school tomorrow.

    Kottu 2010

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