custody.
The legal right to take care of something or somebody, especially children.
Meaning & usage
The legal right to take care of something or somebody, especially children.
The court awarded custody to the child's father.
The mother gained custody of the children.
Temporary possession or care of somebody else's property.
I couldn't pay the bill and now my passport is in custody of the hotel management.
The state of being imprisoned or detained, usually pending a trial.
He was mistreated while in police custody.
An area under the jurisdiction of a custos within the Order of Friars Minor.
The Custody of the Holy Land includes the monasteries of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Latin custōdia (“a keeping, watch, guard, prison”), from custōs (“a keeper, watchman, guard”). Doublet of custode.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.