confinable

Also found in: Thesaurus, Idioms.

con·fine

(kən-fīn′)

tr.v. con·fined, con·fin·ing, con·fines

1. To keep within bounds; restrict: Please confine your remarks to the issues at hand. See Synonyms at limit.

2. To shut or keep in, especially to imprison.

3. To restrict in movement: The sick child was confined to bed.

[French confiner, from Old French, from confins, boundaries; see confines.]

con·fin′a·ble, con·fine′a·ble adj.

con·fin′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive ?

displays may not be confinable to mere discomfort or displeasure.

THE HECKLER'S VETO TODAY

It is enormously helpful to learn, in the light of all this, that Bakhtin goes on to claim that "aspects of this historical emergence of man can found in almost all important realistic novels." Goethe's clarification of historical emergence, and the conception of the human person that attends it, is not confinable to a single genre, but is absorbed by and becomes a defining feature for all fiction that would be known as "realist".

Mad Men, the historical novel, and social change

Nor do we use the plural in the words referring to natural phenomena and natural formations that do not have well confinable boundaries, e.g.