Definition of containment

• a policy of creating strategic alliances in order to check the expansion of a hostile power or ideology or to force it to negotiate peacefully; "containment of communist expansion was a central principle of United States foreign policy from 1947 to the 1975"
• (physics) a system designed to prevent the accidental release of radioactive material from a reactor
• the act of containing; keeping something from spreading; "the containment of the AIDS epidemic"; "the containment of the rebellion"