Meaning & use
arrest
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To take a suspected offender into custody by legal authority, usually so that they can be questioned or charged.
Grammar: Always takes an object; often passive and followed by on suspicion of: he was arrested on suspicion of theft.
Patterns
- arrest someone for something
- arrest someone on suspicion of something
- be arrested
Officers arrested two men outside the bank early this morning.
She was arrested for driving without a license.
The police arrested him on suspicion of burglary.
nouncountable or uncountable
The act of taking a suspected offender into custody, or the state of being held in this way.
Grammar: Countable for a single event (three arrests were made); uncountable after under or in the phrase resisting arrest.
Patterns
- an arrest for something
- under arrest
- make an arrest
The arrest took place at a train station just before midnight.
He was placed under arrest and driven to the local station.
Detectives made an arrest within days of the robbery.
verbtransitiveformal
To halt or slow down a process, especially something harmful that was spreading or growing.
Grammar: Takes an object that is a process, such as a disease or decline: arrest the decline.
Patterns
- arrest the spread of something
- arrest the decline of something
New funding is meant to arrest the decline of the fishing industry.
Doctors hope the drug will arrest the progress of the disease.
Planting grasses can arrest the erosion of the riverbank.
verbtransitiveliterary
To catch and hold someone's attention suddenly and powerfully.
Grammar: Takes an object such as attention or gaze: a loud crash arrested her attention.
Patterns
- arrest someone's attention
- arrest someone's gaze
A flash of red among the trees arrested my attention.
The poster's stark image arrests the eye of every passerby.
Her sudden silence arrested everyone in the room.
Word forms
| third person singular | arrests |
|---|---|
| past tense | arrested |
| past participle | arrested |
| -ing form | arresting |
| plural noun | arrests |
Common combinations
- make an arrest
- The police expect to make an arrest in the case this week.
- under arrest
- You are under arrest, and you have the right to remain silent.
- resist arrest
- The suspect tried to resist arrest and ran down the alley.
- arrest warrant
- A judge signed an arrest warrant for the missing director.
- house arrest
- The former minister spent two years under house arrest.
- arrest the spread of
- Quick action helped arrest the spread of the fire.
Synonyms and how they differ
- detain
- Detain can mean holding someone temporarily without formally charging them, so it is broader than arrest.
- apprehend
- Apprehend is a formal word for catching a suspect, and it stresses the capture rather than the legal process.
- nab
- Nab is informal and suggests catching someone in the act, so it is unsuitable for official reports.
- halt
- Halt is the everyday way to say stop, and it replaces arrest only in the non-legal sense of stopping a process.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: arrest or detention?
arrest vs detention
Detention is the state of being held, which can follow an arrest, while the arrest is the moment of being taken into custody.
Practice
Officers decided to ___ the man on suspicion of theft after the shop's camera footage was checked.
Choose one answer.
Arrest is the verb for legally taking a suspect into custody. The other options are real words but have unrelated meanings.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “arrest”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.