noun
definition
One who has been captured or is otherwise confined.
definition
One held prisoner.
definition
One charmed or subdued by beauty, excellence, or affection; one who is captivated.
verb
definition
To capture; to take captive.
adjective
definition
Held prisoner; not free; confined.
definition
Subdued by love; charmed; captivated.
definition
Of or relating to bondage or confinement; serving to confine.
example
captive chains; captive hours
Examples of captive in a Sentence
She was virtually a captive in the cabin.
He was taken captive in the battle, but exchanged for the wife of Robert Bruce.
The prisoners, who were most barbarously treated, remained captive for over four years.
He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart.
He strove to play the part of royal captive heroically, but the prison life galled him.
The captive was, however, by no means powerless; by refusing canonical institution to the French bishops he involved the ecclesiastical system of Napoleon in inextricable confusion.
Here he fought against some of the usurpers who threatened the throne of Honorius; he made some sort of compact with that emperor and, in 414, he married his sister Placidia, who had been since the siege of Rome a captive in the camp of the Goths.
It was to his keeping that the king first entrusted the captive Arthur of Brittany.
But it was not until 1609 that, the "great Martian labour" being at length completed, he was able, in his own figurative language, to lead the captive planet to the foot of the imperial throne.
The chivalrous courtesy which he showed to the captive princesses was a favourite theme for later rhetoricians.
A number of the principal inhabitants were carried captive to Babylon, and Jerusalem was reduced to the position of an insignificant town.
His hand still held her arm captive.
In 561 B.C. the captive Judaean king, Jehoiachin, had received special marks of favour from Nebuchadrezzar's son Amilmarduk.
Here in the night Mrs Dustin, assisted by her nurse and by a captive English boy, tomahawked and scalped ten Indians (two men, the others children and women) and escaped down the river to Haverhill; a monument to her stands in City Hall Park.
In 1327 the bishop joined Queen Isabella's partisans; he drew up the six articles against Edward II., and was one of those who visited the captive king at Kenilworth to urge him to abdicate in favour of his son.
A count which was concluded at the end of February 1903, put the number of captive bisons at 1119, of which 969 were in parks and zoological gardens in the United States, 41 in Canada and 109 in Europe.
In the early years of the 20th century the sharif Raisuli terrorized the district round Tangier and made captive several Europeans.
Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand.
The desire to link famous names is illustrated by the ancient ascription to Lysias of a rhetorical exercise purportingto be a speech in which the captive general Nicias appealed.
For this display of independence he was imprisoned at Reims, and not released till some three years later, when Napoleon had extorted terms from the captive pope at Fontainebleau.
His son Murkertagh, who gained a great victory over the Norse in 926, is celebrated for his triumphant march round Ireland, the Moirthimchell Eiream, in which, starting from Portglenone on the Bann, he completed a circuit of the island at the head of his armed clan, returning with many captive kings and chieftains.
It was clear that the spiritual forces of the time were also slipping out of his grasp. Early in January he sought to come to terms with the pope (then virtually a captive at Fontainebleau) respecting various questions then in debate concerning the Concordat.
The hen is still more soberly attired; but it is perhaps the siskin's disposition to familiarity that makes it so favourite a captive, and, 'though as a cage-bird it is not ordinarily long-lived, it readily adapts itself to the loss of liberty.
In 1141 he was taken captive by the Turks (Seljuks) and remained in their hands for a year.
In a year and a half the cubs attain their full development; and from observations on captive specimens it appears that the duration of life ought to extend to some thirteen or fourteen years.
His object is (as most scholars, probably, believe) to warn, stimulate or console the captive Jews, some full believers, some semi-believers, some unbelievers or idolaters.
The Jeune Captive appeared in the Decade philosophique, Jan.
One of the figures, a barbarian captive, effeminate like those which appear on Roman triumphal arches, is practically intact.
Under this system, which was intended to provide Netherlands India with a fixed population of European descent, Dutch girls were sent to the archipelago to be married to white settlers, and subsequently marriages between Dutchmen and captive native women were encouraged.
The herb rue is potent against them, as in British folk-lore, and a man long captive among the Jan escaped from them by observing their avoidance of rue, and by plucking two handfuls thereof.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other fifteen were lost.
In 306 the emperor Constantine the Great caused multitudes of Frankish prisoners to be thrown to the beasts here, and in 313 made a similar spectacle of the captive Bructeri.
The British government, on hearing of his arrival at Plymouth, decided to send him to St Helena, the formation of that island being such as to admit of a certain freedom of movement for the august captive, with none of the perils for the world at large which the tsar's choice, Elba, had involved.
When Procles the tyrant was carried captive by Periander of Corinth, the oligarchy was restored, and the people of Epidaurus continued ever afterwards close allies of the Spartan power.
These contain also the Acts of Andrew and Matthew (or Matthias) in which Matthew (or Matthias) is represented as a captive in the country of the anthropophagi.
Sargon's son and successor, Naram-Sin, followed up the successes of his father by marching into Magan, whose king he took captive.
The Pisan fleet of three hundred sail, commanded by the archbishop Pietro Moriconi, attacked the Balearic Isles, where as many as 20,000 Christians were said to be held captive by the Moslems, and returned loaded with spoil and with a multitude of Christian and Moslem prisoners.
Walther is not an historical figure, although the legend undoubtedly represents typical occurrences of the migration period, such as the detention and flight of hostages of noble family from the court of the Huns, and the rescue of captive maidens by abduction.
Chenier's influence has been specially remarkable in Russia, where Pushkin imitated him, Kogloff translated La Jeune Captive, La jeune Tarentine and other famous pieces, while the critic Vesselovsky pronounces "Il a retabli le lyrisme pur dans la poesie frangaise."
Syphax, king of Numidia, died in the territory of Tibur as a captive in 201 B.C.; and in A.D.
It was suppressed in an hour's time by the tsar's troops, of whom only one man was mortally wounded; and the horrible vengeance (September - October 1698) which Peter on his return to Russia wreaked upon the captive musketeers was due not to any actual fear of these antiquated warriors, but to his consciousness that behind them stood the reactionary majority of the nation who secretly sympathized with, though they durst not assist, the rebels.
About 776 his brother Arichis had been carried as a prisoner to France, and when five years later the Frankish king visited Rome, Paulus successfully wrote to him on behalf of the captive.
Amasis, sent to meet them and quell the revolt, was proclaimed king by the rebels, and Apries, who had now to rely entirely on his mercenaries, was defeated and taken prisoner in the ensuing conflict at Momemphis; the usurper treated the captive prince with great lenity, but was eventually persuaded to give him up to the people, by whom he was strangled and buried in his ancestral tomb at Sais.
During the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar (48) she was recognized as queen by the inhabitants, her brother, the young Ptolemy, being then held captive by Caesar.
Arthur's fate is well known, and Eleanor, the daughter, was kept captive till her death in 1241.
One of the first acts of the new king was to lead an army into Syria, where revolt was again rife; he reached and perhaps crossed the Euphrates and returned home to Thebes with seven captive kings of Tikhsi and much spoil.
An expedition sent in the following year (5426) succeeded in taking captive the king of Cyprus, who was brought to Cairo and presently released for a ransom of 200,000 dinars, on condition of acknowledging the suzerainty of the Egyptian sultan and paying him an annual tribute.
By the 29th of March 1298 Wallace appears, in a charter granted by himself, as guardian of the kingdom, and, with Andrew Murray, as army leader in the name of King John - that is, the captive Baliol.
He thereupon wrested the island from Isaac, whom he took captive.
Taken captive himself in 1433, he was exchanged for Talbot.