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say it: kap-TIV-uh-tee
captivity is a noun meaning "the state of being imprisoned". It carries 2 recorded senses.
the state of being imprisoned
“he was held in captivity until he died”
“the imprisonment of captured soldiers”
“his ignominious incarceration in the local jail”
“he practiced the immurement of his enemies in the castle dungeon”
the state of being a slave
“So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for captivity come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.