One way to picture it: you put someone *into* a prison and the walls close around them. The key part of the image is not the punishment — it is the boundary. Wherever they turn, there is a wall.
From the word’s history
From Old French emprisonner, built from en-/im- 'into' + prison. The word is literally 'to put into prison' — the prefix carries the movement inward, the root carries the walls.
來自古法文 emprisonner，拆開就是 en-／im-（進入）＋ prison（監獄）。字面上就是「把某人放進監獄」——前綴帶的是「往裡面送」這個動作，字根帶的是那圈牆。這也是為什麼 imprison 天生就是及物動詞：一定有人被送進去，不會單獨說 he imprisoned。
Wiktionary, 'imprison' (Middle English imprisonen, from Old French emprisonner; im- + prison)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
imprisonverb/ɪmˈpɹɪzən/
- 1
To put in or as if in prison; confine somebody against their will.
- One of the village's most notable sons was Thomas Grantham, a Baptist church leader born in 1634, who was persecuted and imprisoned in the struggle for nonconformist beliefs during the reign of Charles II.
- None of these people has ever had what they really wanted, and if they get a glimmer of it, they back off suspiciously, failures of imagination helping to imprison them further.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。