captives
People held against
Captives are people or animals held in confinement against their will, whether by force, circumstance, or legal authority.
Prisoners of war, kidnapping victims, and zoo animals all qualify as captives.
The word also works as an adjective describing someone unable to escape: a captive audience cannot easily leave and must endure whatever is presented.
In insurance and business contexts, a captive company or captive insurer is one created solely to serve its parent organization.
People held in custody
- hostagesCaptives held for demands
- inmatesIncarcerated individuals
- POWsCaptured military personnel
- interneesPeople forcibly confined
confinement · chains · shackles · dungeons · cells · imprisonment · guards · ransom
Made someone's property
- trappedUnable to escape
- spellboundHeld as if enchanted
- enthralledDeeply fascinated, held rapt
- mesmerizedHeld in rapt attention
addicted · obsessed · bound · ensnared · beholden · devoted · infatuated · consumed
Persons owned by others
- bondsmenPersons in servitude
- thrallsPersons in bondage
- serfsFeudal bound laborers
- indenturedContracted to serve
chains · auction · trafficking · emancipation · abolition · plantations · galley · servants
Captured combatants held during hostilities
- POWsCaptured military personnel
- enemiesHostile opposing parties
- surrenderCease resistance, yield
- Geneva ConventionWartime humanitarian law treaties
camps · interrogation · exchange · repatriation · combatants · parole · internment · torture
detainees
People held in custody
internees · confinement · chains · shackles · dungeons · cells · imprisonment · guards · ransom · release
enslaved
Made someone's property
- trappedUnable to escape
- spellboundHeld as if enchanted
- enthralledDeeply fascinated, held rapt
mesmerized · addicted · obsessed · bound · ensnared · beholden · devoted · infatuated · consumed · gripped
slaves
Persons owned by others
indentured · chains · auction · trafficking · emancipation · abolition · plantations · galley · servants · conquest
prisoners of war
Captured combatants held during hostilities
Geneva Convention · camps · interrogation · exchange · repatriation · combatants · parole · internment · torture · forced labor
trapped
Unable to escape
sanctuary · rehabilitation · breeding · poachers · nets · snares · aquarium · menagerie · specimens · handlers
- Barbary PiratesBarbary pirates, Barbary Coast, Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis
- Biblical warfarebattle, battles, war, wars, warfare
- Aztec societyAztec Empire, Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma, noble class, commoners
- Islamic slaveryconcubine, manumission, slave markets, domestic slave, trans-Saharan trade
- imprisonmentprison, jail, prisoners, cells, dungeons
- Frontier WarsIndian Wars, French and Indian War, cavalry charge, militia, militias
- captive audienceGroup forced to listen
- held captiveKept by force
- captive breedingReproducing animals under human care
- hold captive
- Babylonian captivityJudean deportation to Mesopotamia
- captive marketConsumers lacking purchasing alternatives
captive, captivity, captivate, captivated, captivating, captivation, captivates, captivities