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Detain   /dɪtˈeɪn/   Listen
Detain

verb
(past & past part. detained; pres. part. detaining)
1.
Deprive of freedom; take into confinement.  Synonym: confine.
2.
Stop or halt.  Synonyms: delay, stay.
3.
Cause to be slowed down or delayed.  Synonyms: delay, hold up.  "She delayed the work that she didn't want to perform"



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"Detain" Quotes from Famous Books



... thus going out into moments, into nature, and love, and thought! Father, I am weary! Reassume me for a while, I pray Thee. Oh let me rest awhile in Thee, Thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer I suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I cannot pause; they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile, and again I will go forth on a renewed service. It is not that I repine, my Father, but I sink from want of rest, and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... claiming his protection; she stated that she had educated me and brought me up, and that she had a claim upon me. My mother's treatment of me was so notorious, that the commandant immediately decided that my grandmother had a right to detain me; and when my father came a day or two after to take me back, he was ordered home by the commandant, with a severe rebuke, and the assurance that I should not return to a father who could permit such cruelty ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... desolation which animated one little tried hitherto by sorrow. The Italian home was shattered, and no thought of even attempting a patched-up existence in its ruined walls seems to have occurred to him; even the neighbourhood of the spot in which all that was mortal of her had been laid had no power to detain him. But his departure was no mere flight from scenes intolerably dear. He had their child to educate and his own life to fulfil, and he set himself with grim resolution to the work, as one who had indeed had everything, but who was as little inclined to abandon himself ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... on the corals where they seemed least pointed. I did not succeed at all in making a fire; the night was quite dark and moonless, and a fine rain penetrated everything. I have rarely passed a longer night or felt so lonely. The new day revived my spirits, breakfast did not detain me long, as I had nothing to eat, so I kept along the shore, jumping and climbing, and had to swim through several lagoons, swarming, as I heard afterwards, with big sharks! After a while the coral shore changed ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... were out of town for a few weeks, during which the child became alarmingly low. The physician gave Pauline little hope. It was too weak to be removed for change of air. Nature might rally, but nothing more could be done for it. Pauline attempted to detain her husband by her side, but he shook her rudely off, saying, "Nonsense, you are always fancying the brat ill!" and the young mother was left desolate by the little bed of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various


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