punishment

/ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/

/ˈpʌnɪʃmɛnt/

Other forms: punishments

Punishment is the penalty you have to pay when you're caught doing something bad. A teenager's punishment for missing her curfew might be helping her dad clean the garage.

When someone is officially penalized for a mistake or a crime, that's punishment. Stealing a car could result in a punishment involving jail, while pinching your little sister might mean a punishment as mild as sitting in a chair and thinking about ways to be nicer next time. The Latin root of punishment and its related verb, punish, is punire, "punish, correct, take vengeance for, or cause pain for some offense."

Definitions of punishment

1. noun

   the act of punishing
   synonyms: penalisation, penalization, penalty, sanction

   types:

   castigation, chastisement

   verbal punishment

   corporal punishment

   the infliction of physical injury on someone convicted of committing a crime

   cruel and unusual punishment

   punishment prohibited by the 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution; includes torture or degradation or punishment too severe for the crime committed

   detention

   a punishment in which a student must stay at school after others have gone home

   correction, discipline

   the act of punishing

   economic strangulation

   punishment of a group by cutting off commercial dealings with them

   imprisonment

   putting someone in prison or in jail as lawful punishment

   medicine, music

   punishment for one's actions

   self-punishment

   punishment inflicted on yourself

   stick

   threat of a penalty

   penance, self-abasement, self-mortification

   voluntary self-punishment in order to atone for some wrongdoing

   beating, drubbing, lacing, licking, thrashing, trouncing, whacking

   the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows

   self-flagellation

   self-punishment inflicted by whipping

   spanking

   the act of slapping on the buttocks

   electric shock

   the use of electricity to administer punishment or torture

   capital punishment, death penalty, executing, execution

   putting a condemned person to death

   gantlet, gauntlet

   a form of punishment in which a person is forced to run between two lines of men facing each other and armed with clubs or whips to beat the victim

   kick in the butt

   punishment inflicted by kicking the victim in the behind

   lapidation, stoning

   the act of pelting with stones; punishment inflicted by throwing stones at the victim (even unto death)

   type of:

   social control

   control exerted (actively or passively) by group action