the.com/detention
Society's oldest trick for turning a 50-minute math class into a 3-hour sentence.
means A period of forced staying-behind as punishment — being held back after school, or, in its graver legal sense, being held in custody by the state.
from From Latin detentio, from detinere — 'to hold back, keep from' (de- 'away' + tenere 'to hold,' the same root that gives us 'tenant' and 'tenacious'). It entered English in legal and administrative use for the act of keeping someone or something in custody; the schoolroom sense — staying after class as punishment — is a much later, more petty extension of the same idea: the state holds a prisoner, the teacher holds a twelve-year-old who flicked spitballs.
- legal cousin
- same word used for pre-trial jail holding
- silent treatment
- many schools ban talking during the whole thing
- peak irony
- meant to teach discipline, teaches clock-watching instead