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intern

nounverbadjectivenounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɪnˈtɜːn//
  • United States//ɪnˈtɝn//

A person who is interned, forcibly or voluntarily.

noun

  1. 1

    A person who is interned, forcibly or voluntarily.

Etymology

From French interner, from interne (“inner, internal”), from Latin internus (“within, internal”), compare Etymology 2.

verb

  1. 1

    To imprison somebody, usually without trial.

    The US government interned thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

    That description was of a camp at the Tanforan Racetrack near San Francisco, one of several centers in California where Japanese and Japanese-American residents (Issei and Nisei) were held before being interned in areas remote from the West Coast.

    Cuba could take pride in its health system. It could, that is, if it weren't for the way it treats those who test positive [for HIV], whether sick or not, interning them in an isolation that has no medical justification, that is against all scientific direction and is a frontal assault on all human rights.

  2. 2

    To imprison somebody, usually without trial. To confine or hold (foreign military personnel who stray into the state's territory) within prescribed limits during wartime.

    The Swiss government interned the Italian soldiers who had strayed onto Swiss territory.

    The same day, 354 British and Australian prisoners who had been interned in north Korea arrived by rail at Inch'on after arrangements had been made with the Russian commander at P'yongyang and were embarked for the Philippines.

  3. 3

    To internalize.

    Strings are automatically interned if they are assigned to a literal string within code.

adjective

  1. 1

    archaicInternal.

    Man was made after Gods image, which must be understood of the intern graces of the Soule

noun

  1. 1

    A student or recent graduate who works in order to gain experience in their chosen field.

    Students know that working as an intern can provide contacts and all-important experience in their chosen fields. And last year, 26 percent of graduates hired by companies had worked as interns, compared with 9 percent the year before.

  2. 2

    A medical student or recent graduate working in a hospital as a final part of medical training.

Etymology

From French interne (“inner, internal”), from Latin internus (“within, internal”), from inter (“between”); compare Etymology 1.

verb

  1. 1

    To work as an intern, usually with little or no pay or other legal prerogatives of employment, and for the purpose of furthering a program of education.

    I'll be interning at Universal Studios this summer.

Forms

plural
interns
comparative
more intern
superlative
most intern
past tense
interned
past participle
interned
present participle
interning
third person singular
interns
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).