Definition of "prisoner of war" []

• A person taken by or surrendering to enemy forces in wartime. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Next, James L. Kemper had been exchanged as a prisoner of war but was so much weakened by the wound received at Gettysburg that he had been assigned to command the Virginia reserves."
• "According to General Moultrie, then a prisoner of war on parole in Charleston, This defeat . . . chagrined and disappointed the British officers and Tories exceedingly. . ."
• "What this means is, that here in our American democracy the Catholic Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time, watching for the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no secret of his intentions."