punish
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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.
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]punish (third-person singular simple present punishes, present participle punishing, simple past and past participle punished)
- (transitive) To cause to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action.
- Synonym: castigate
- If a prince violates the law, then he must be punished like an ordinary person.
- 1818, William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, page 255:
- 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.
- 2007, Matthew Weait, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission, Routledge, →ISBN, page 80:
- The law needs to punish this behaviour as a deterrent to others.
- 2017, Joyce Carol Oates, Double Delight, Open Road Media, →ISBN:
- 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.
- (transitive, figuratively) To treat harshly and unfairly.
- Synonym: mistreat
- 1994, Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 68:
- 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.
- 2008, Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, →ISBN, page 5:
- Homer, moreover, gives the impression that the Sun punished Odysseus's men; but we are later told that the Sun cannot punish individual men […]
- 2009, Gordon Wright, Learning to Ride, Hunt, and Show, Skyhorse Publishing Inc., →ISBN, page 44:
- The rider who comes back on his horse in mid-air over a fence is punishing his horse severely.
- (transitive, colloquial) To handle or beat severely; to maul.
- (transitive, colloquial) To consume a large quantity of.
- 1970, Doc Greene, The Memory Collector, page 49:
- A few moments later, we were all sitting around the veranda of the hunters' dining hall, punishing the gin, as usual.
Derived terms
[edit]- punishable
- punisher (noun)
- punishing
- punishment (noun)
- telish, telishment
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to cause to suffer for crime or misconduct
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to treat harshly and unfairly
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Further reading
[edit]- “punish”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “punish”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
[edit]Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *kʷey-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- Rhymes:English/ʌnɪʃ
- Rhymes:English/ʌnɪʃ/2 syllables
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