behind bars

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Prepositional phrase

behind bars

1. (figuratively, idiomatic) In jail, in prison.
   • 1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXVII, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, →OCLC:

     There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

   • 2001 May 7, Margot Roosevelt et al., “The War Against The War On Drugs”, in Time:

     Some 460,000 Americans are behind bars for drug offenses.

   • 2014 November 27, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian:

     Leading Jordanian exponents of the Salafi-jihadi world view, such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, are now behind bars or silent, fearing arrest by the powerful mukhabarat secret police.

Translations

in jail or prison

Arabic: (calques of Engish) خَلْفَ الْقُضْبَان (ḵalfa l-quḍbān), وَرَاءَ الْقُضْبَان (warāʔa l-quḍbān) Azerbaijani: dəmir barmaqlıq arxasında Belarusian: за кра́тамі (za krátami) Bulgarian: зад реше́тките (zad rešétkite) Catalan: a la garjola Chinese: Mandarin: 關在監牢裡 / 关在监牢里 (guān zài jiānláo lǐ), 身陷囹圄 (zh) (shēnxiànlíngyǔ) Czech: za mřížemi Danish: bag tremmer Dutch: achter de tralies Finnish: telkien takana, kalterien takana, vankilassa French: derrière les barreaux (fr), au violon (fr) German: hinter Gitter Greek: στη φυλακή (sti fylakí) Hebrew: מֵאֲחוֹרֵי סוֹרָג וּבְרִיחַ (me'akhoréi sorág uvríakh) Hungarian: rács mögött Icelandic: bakvið lás og sleggju Indonesian: di balik jeruji besi Italian: dietro le sbarre Japanese: 獄中で (ja) (ごくちゅうで, gokuchū de) Korean: 감옥에서 (ko) (gamogeseo) Latvian: aiz restēm Norwegian: Bokmål: bak lås og slå (no) Nynorsk: bak lås og slå Polish: za kratkami (pl) Portuguese: atrás das grades Romanian: după gratii Russian: за решёткой (za rešótkoj) Serbo-Croatian: иза решетака Slovak: za mrežami Spanish: entre rejas (es), tras las rejas Swedish: bakom lås och bom (sv) Tagalog: himas-rehas Telugu: కటకటాల్లో (kaṭakaṭāllō) Thai: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: за ґра́тами (za grátamy)

See also

• See also Thesaurus:jail

References

• “behind bars”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.