arrest

Related to arrest: arresting, AREST, You have the right to remain silent

Am I under arrest?

Said when one is trying to determine if the police will take them into custody. A: "Oh my God, am I under arrest?" B: "What? No, I'm just giving you a parking ticket."

under arrest

In police custody, as after committing a crime. The policeman stated that the criminal was under arrest and then handcuffed him.
See also: arrest
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

*under arrest

arrested and in the custody of the police in preparation for the filing of a charge. (*Typically: be ~; put someone ~.) Stop where you are! You are under arrest! Am I under arrest, officer? What did I do?
See also: arrest
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

under arrest

In police custody, as in They put him under arrest and charged him with stealing a car. [Late 1300s]
See also: arrest
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
See also:
  • Am I under arrest?
  • under arrest
  • slip through (one's) fingers
  • slip through fingers
  • slip through somebody's fingers
  • slip through your fingers
  • release (someone or something) to (one)
  • release to
  • mug shot
  • remand
References in classic literature
"Arrested, were they?" inquired Athos; "is it known why?"
Fouquet in the midst of a thousand enthusiastic guests who surround him, and say, 'In the king's name, I arrest you.' But to go up to him, to turn him first one way and then another, to drive him up into one of the corners of the chess-board, in such a way that he cannot escape; to take him away from his guests, and keep him a prisoner for you, without one of them, alas!
Bauerstein's arrest, of course," I answered impatiently.
"Not I!--I haven't had them arrested. In the first place, I am pretty sure that they have not had anything to do with the affair, and then because--"
Passepartout thereupon recounted Aouda's history, the affair at the Bombay pagoda, the purchase of the elephant for two thousand pounds, the rescue, the arrest, and sentence of the Calcutta court, and the restoration of Mr.
"Oh, yes; you are to be arrested for willfully breaking one of the Laws of Oz."
I was arrested and became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Reserve, the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars wrote this letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself posted." Monte Cristo went to a secretary, opened a drawer by a spring, from which he took a paper which had lost its original color, and the ink of which had become of a rusty hue -- this he placed in the hands of Mercedes.
Arrests were not as yet made in the name of William of Orange; he had not been Stadtholder long enough for that.
"I demand that he be placed under arrest. I found him in the act of destroying the reserve instruments, and when I would have interfered to protect them he fell upon me and beat me.
The king's Musketeers are arrested by the Guards of the cardinal, are they?" continued M.
Representations have been made to us by the American Government that the murder of two of her citizens within the course of twenty-four hours, and the absence of any arrest, is somewhat of a reflection upon our police service.
When asked what he was doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the flames.
It's all very well to shrug your shoulders, but when there are eighteen arrests within one week on a charge of espionage, there must be something up."
If in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he entered terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their high seats, and sometimes roared oaths and violently got himself arrested.
Not only had he been wantonly assaulted, badly battered, and arrested, but the morning papers without exception came out with lurid accounts of his drunken brawl with the proprietor of the notorious Vendome.