Pick the literary, semi-common, highly formal word "immure" when you need to sound very serious as you describe someone who is closed off from society.

People (and people's remains) can be quite literally immured: "Their bodies are immured together in this tomb;" "Montresor immures Fortunato in the catacombs;" "They stayed immured in the fortress;" "He was immured in prison for over a decade."

But often, people are immured figuratively: "At summer camp, with no access to phones or the internet, we were immured;" "He immured himself in his fraternity, making no friends outside of it."

Often, we talk about people immuring themselves in some place, or behind some kind of wall: "They immured themselves in the country, an hour's drive from the nearest grocery store;" "She immured herself behind a wall of sarcasm."

Less commonly, we talk about people immuring themselves from something, as if putting up a wall between it and themselves: "She deleted her social media accounts, immuring herself from other people's judgments."

"So you've decided to immure yourself in the backwoods for another year, I hear."
  — Marian Keith, The Silver Maple, 1905

"We have learnt of late years, to our gain and profit, to think and speak of bodily ailments as natural phenomena, not to slur over them and hide them away in attics and bedrooms. We no longer think of insanity as demoniacal possession, and we no longer immure people with diseased brains in the secluded apartments of lovely houses.''
  — Arthur Christopher Benson, The Altar Fire, 1907

has this page helped you understand "immure"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "immure" without saying "hide away" or "lock up."

try it out:

Fill in the blanks: "(Someone, or some group of people) (can't or shouldn't) immure themselves behind a wall of (something)."

Example 1: "I had a friend in middle school who was required to wear headbands. Although that made no sense to me at the time, it does now. Her parents didn't want her to immure herself behind a curtain of hair."

Example 2: "The U.S. has had to learn–repeatedly, with every immigrant wave–that it cannot immure itself behind a wall of immigration restrictions and cultural purity."
  — Staff, Time, 27 November 2005

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is "Coaxed into a Haiku!"

I'll give you the basics of a news story, and you boil the story down into a haiku. You can check out some examples here.

Feel free to take full creative license, omitting or warping the facts, adding dialogue, using slang, cursing, and/or burying the lede. Just do your best to fit the story into a three-line poem of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.

Try this one today...

"Rent Is So High, New Yorkers Are Living With Nuns. Katie Rettig arrived in the Big Apple with two 50-pound suitcases, a job starting the next morning and no place to live. Furnished short-term rentals in Manhattan were running $5,000 a month. Then, on the 15th page of Google search results, she found a convent. A few days later, Rettig was settling into a furnished room at the Sacred Heart Residence in the Chelsea neighborhood as a nun showed her around."
  — Anvee Bhutani, Wall Street Journal, 11 June 2026

To see one possible haiku, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. The precise opposite of IMMURE is DISIMMURE. But a near opposite of IMMURE is

A. BE.
B. FREE.
C. LOVE.

2. The poet Henry Vaughan wrote: "Eloquent silence! able to immure / An atheist's thoughts." In other words, silence can _____ one's thoughts.

A. trap or confine
B. test or challenge
C. strengthen or fortify

Answers to the review questions: 1. B 2. A From the game: If you're happy with your haiku, then you succeeded! Here's mine:    Bound for NYC?    Seek shelter among the nuns,    renters' salvation.

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.