- 1囚犯、受刑人。台灣矯正機關較常說「收容人」，含還沒判刑的在押者。
An inmate is a person being kept in a prison (or, in some places, a jail). Guards, lawyers, and news writers use this word a lot; it is the usual, slightly official way to say someone who lives inside the prison now. Though actually, older English also used inmate for anyone living in an institution — a hospital, an old asylum — because the first idea was simply a person who lives in this house. Today, if you hear inmate with no extra words, people almost always mean prison. Some prefer prisoner or person, because inmate can sound as if the person belongs to the building; most everyday speech still says inmate.
From the word’s history
From inn + mate, or from in + mate.
可能是 inn「旅店」加 mate「同伴」，或 in 加 mate。
組成From inn + -mate, or from in- + -mate. inn is an old lodging house; mate is a person who shares a place with you; in- means inside. The old idea was someone living in the same house; later it narrowed to someone kept in a prison.
原始詞典資料3 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。
inmatenoun/ˈɪn.meɪt/
- 1
A person confined to an institution such as a prison (as a convict) or hospital (as a patient).
- 2
A person who shares a residence (such as a hotel guest, a lodger, or a student living on campus), or other place.
- I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
- [T]he inmates of the coach, by numerous hard, painful joltings, and ponderous, dragging trundlings, are suddenly made sensible of some great change in the character of the road.
- 3
Synonym of passenger, a person held or riding within a vehicle.
- P. della Valle writes in the same strain: "And these two, the palankins and the andors [a kind of doli] also differ from one another, for in the andor the cane which sustains it is, as it is in the reti, straight; whereas in the palankin, for the greater convenience of the inmate, and to give more room for raising his head, the cane is arched upwards like this, _∩_..."
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。