shut-inadj.n.

1849 G. Cupples Green Hand vi, in Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Dec. 736/1 As for the dead shut-in appearance of it,..you'd never think it was a river.

1909 Sunday School Times (Philadelphia) 27 Feb. 110 She had brought a handful of flowers and a heart full of sunshine to the shut-in mother.

1912 A. Hoch in Amer. Jrnl. Insanity LXIX. 888 The chief traits which had existed before the mental breakdown were those which I at that time called the shut-in tendencies—tendencies to which Professor Bleuler has recently applied the term autism.

1932 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. Apr. 301 Subject 6 has fewer friends..because she is so ‘shut in’ and difficult to get to know.

1943 J. B. Priestley Daylight on Sat. xviii. 133 You could tell by the shut-in look on their faces as they worked that they were busy thinking about these things.

1957 R. Hoggart Uses of Literacy viii. 213 It is violent and sexual, but all in a claustrophobic and shut-in way.

1975 Budget (Sugarcreek, Ohio) 20 Mar. 7/4 Neal C. Troyer..and Dan L. Schwartz's spent Sat. at Nappanee visiting shut-in relatives, Bis. John L. Schwartz and Mrs. Lizzie Borkholder who is blind.

1931 Economist 28 Mar. 671/2 Production from the new East Texas fields is weakening prices, and the vast amount of shut-in production is a constant menace.

1960 Fortn. Rev. (Anderson & Strudwick, Richmond, Va.) 19 Aug. The long struggle to obtain markets for Canada's large shut-in natural gas reserves was finally concluded last week.

1962 Listener 10 May 796/2 There remains a huge quantity of shut-in oil capacity overhanging the market and depressing prices.

1974 P. L. Moore et al. Drilling Pract. Man. xii. 314 The shut-in drill pipe pressure is easy to obtain if there is no back-pressure valve in the drill string.

1904 Prosp. Mass. (U.S.A.) Blind Assoc. 2 The lonely and the unbusy, the shut-ins in body and in mind.

1909 Springfield (Mass.) Weekly Republican 25 Feb. 10 Flowers for distribution among the sick and shut-ins in the hospitals and the homes.

1932 N.Y. Herald Tribune 2 May 11/5 Benefit for Shut-in Society.

1949 Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch 1 Feb. 9/2 (heading) Salad dressing diet palls on storm shut-ins.

1952 Catholic Times 25 July 7/4 It is the ‘shut-ins’ and sufferers who give the greatest of all contributions—their sufferings.

1966 Daily Tel. 25 May 19/5 The first Sunday in June is Shut-In's Day, a special day set aside each year to remember the sick and housebound.

1975 C. Potok In Beginning ii. 118 Better a man..who is a man of the world and can also learn than a bearded shut-in with the brain of a genius and the soul of a calf.

1979 Arizona Daily Star 22 July j6/4 Volunteers are needed to grocery shop for elderly shut-ins.

1962 T. C. Frick Petroleum Production Handbk. II. xxx. 7 Subsurface-pressure gauges are very useful in wells where liquids accumulate in the wellbore during shut-in.

1977 R. D. Langenkamp Handbk. Oil Industry Terms & Phrases (ed. 2) 152 There is a great difference between a shut-down and a shut-in... A well is shut in when its wellhead valves are closed, shutting off production.

1913 D. H. Lawrence Let. ?10 June (1962) I. 210 The world gets a queer feeling of shut-in-ness, as if it stifled one, the horizon being too near, the sky too low.

1920 Chambers's Jrnl. Jan. 23/2 Leaving the bowl of the crater with its strange sense of shut-in-ness.

1952 Jrnl. Mental Sci. 98 310 There is evidence that shy, shut-in people are more liable to schizophrenia than outgoing folk, but this is disputed, and some psychiatrists maintain that the ‘shut-inness’ is just an early stage of the illness.