punish
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpʌnɪʃ/
rhymes: -ʌnɪʃ
Forms: form: punishes
form: punishing
form: punished
form: punished
form: punishe
Etymology: From Middle English punischen, from Anglo-Norman, Old French puniss-, stem of some of the conjugated forms of punir, from Latin puniō (“I inflict punishment upon”), from poena (“punishment, penalty”); see pain. Displaced Old English wītnian and (mostly, in this sense) wrecan.
Senses: examples: text: If a prince violates the law, then he must be punished like an ordinary person.
text: It was not from the want of proper laws that dangerous principles had been disseminated, and had assumed a threatening aspect, but because those laws had not been employed by the executive power to remedy the evil, and to punish the offenders.
ref: 1818, William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, page 255:
text: The law needs to punish this behaviour as a deterrent to others.
ref: 2007, Matthew Weait, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission, Routledge, →ISBN, page 80:
text: But officials here maintain that their methods do make a difference, and they follow it up with post-release programs. The aim of Bastoy is not to punish or seek revenge, Nilsen said. The only punishment is to take away the prisoner’s right to be a free member of society.
ref: 2012 May 24, John D. Sutter, “Welcome to the world’s nicest prison”, in CNN:
text: His mother had punished him when he'd deserved it. She'd loved him, he was “all she had,” but she'd punished him, too.
ref: 2017, Joyce Carol Oates, Double Delight, Open Road Media, →ISBN:
synonyms: castigate
glosses: To cause (a child, student, or someone else being looked after, or a suspect or criminal) to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent, teacher, or police officer).
examples: text: But each effort that Anna makes —and she has attempted many— meets with obstacles from a welfare bureaucracy that punishes single mothers for initiative and partial economic self-sufficiency.
ref: 1994, Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 68:
text: Homer, moreover, gives the impression that the Sun punished Odysseus's men; but we are later told that the Sun cannot punish individual men […]
ref: 2008, Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, →ISBN, page 5:
text: The rider who comes back on his horse in mid-air over a fence is punishing his horse severely.
ref: 2009, Gordon Wright, Learning to Ride, Hunt, and Show, Skyhorse Publishing Inc., →ISBN, page 44:
synonyms: mistreat
glosses: To treat harshly and unfairly.
glosses: To handle or beat severely; to maul.
examples: text: A few moments later, we were all sitting around the veranda of the hunters' dining hall, punishing the gin, as usual.
ref: 1970, Doc Greene, The Memory Collector, page 49:
glosses: To consume a large quantity of.
Derived terms: word: corporally punish
word: mispunish
word: outpunish
word: overpunish
word: prepunish
word: punishability
word: punishable
word: punishee
word: punisher
word: punishing
word: punishment
word: repunish
word: telish
word: telishment
Related terms: pain