To put someone in prison or confinement; to imprison.
From Old French emprisoner, combining em- + prison (prison), derived from Latin prehensio (a seizing). The form represents an older variant of 'imprison' before standardization of spelling and prefix usage.
Emprison is essentially a Middle English version of 'imprison' that eventually lost out in the spelling wars—a reminder that English standardization is surprisingly recent, with multiple acceptable spellings existing side by side for centuries.
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