Confines

How to spell confines

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce confines

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confines mean?

1. nounThe borders, limits, or bounds within which something is contained.
2. verbKeeps someone or something within fixed limits; restricts or shuts in.

Confines in a sentence

• noun

  The staff rarely left the confines of the office during the busy season.

• verb

  The new policy confines all parking to the lower level of the garage.

• noun

  Within the confines of a tight budget, the team still delivered the project.

• verb

  A broken hip confines her to the ground floor of the house for weeks.

Where does confines come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin confinis, an adjective meaning 'bordering on' or 'sharing a boundary with', built from the prefix con- ('together with') and finis, which literally meant 'end', 'limit', or 'boundary'. The same finis sits inside a whole family of familiar English words, including 'finish', 'final', 'finite', and 'define', all of which carry the idea of where something stops. The Latin neuter noun confinium meant 'a common border' or 'the territory along a frontier', and this passed into Old French as confines before entering English in the late 1300s. Early English use kept the literal sense of borderlands and frontiers, and from there it broadened to mean the limits or bounds within which something is kept, as in the confines of a room. The verb developed alongside it, meaning to shut something within those limits. Remembering that the heart of the word is finis, 'boundary', helps fix the single n and the fin spelling rather than any doubled letters.

How the word is built

• con- (together, with)
• fin (from Latin finis: end, boundary, limit)
• -es (plural/third-person ending)