detain.
To keep something from proceeding or coming to completion; to delay.
Meaning & usage
To keep something from proceeding or coming to completion; to delay.
To keep someone from proceeding by holding them back or making claims on their attention.
To keep back or from; to withhold.
To put someone under custody.
To seize goods for official purposes.
Where this word comes from
From Old French detenir. Doublet of détente. Cognate with Italian detenere, Portuguese deter, Romanian deține, and Spanish detener.
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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.