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What does detain mean?

Looking for the meaning or definition of the word detain? Here's what it means.

Verb
  1. (transitive) To keep someone from proceeding by holding them back or making claims on their attention.
  2. (transitive) To put under custody.
  3. (transitive) To keep back or from; to withhold.
  4. (transitive) To seize goods for official purposes.
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Examples
So mental health professionals will be under pressure to practise defensively and, if in doubt, to detain.
In the later years, major state intelligence agencies had their safe houses to detain and question Tiger guerrilla suspects.
I have calls to make, and do not wish to detain you for longer than is needful.
He denied all knowledge of the bank robbery, but police were able to detain him on a technicality.
Insofar as form and language detain him, they detain him as questions of ideology.
His native area seems determined to detain foreign tourists by printing road signs in Irish only.

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