punitive

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: pu=ni=tive

CIDE DICTIONARY

punitive, a. 

 Of or pertaining to punishment; involving, awarding, or inflicting punishment; as, punitive law or justice.  [1913 Webster]
"If death be punitive, so, likewise, is the necessity imposed upon man of toiling for his subsistence."  [1913 Webster]
"We shall dread a blow from the punitive hand."  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

punitive, adj. (also punitory)
1 inflicting or intended to inflict punishment.
2 (of taxation etc.) extremely severe.
3 Law (of damages etc.) = VINDICTIVE.

Derivative

punitively adv.

Etymology

F punitif -ive or med.L punitivus (as PUNISHMENT)

THESAURUS

punitive

avenging, castigating, castigatory, chastening, chastising, compensatory, correctional, corrective, disciplinary, grudgeful, grueling, implacable, inflictive, irreconcilable, penal, penological, punishing, punitory, rancorous, reciprocal, recompensing, recompensive, reparative, restitutive, retaliative, retaliatory, retributive, retributory, revanchist, revengeful, unappeasable, vengeful, vindicatory, vindictive

ROGET THESAURUS

punitive

Punishment

N punishment, punition, chastisement, chastening, correction, castigation, discipline, infliction, trial, judgment, penalty, retribution, thunderbolt, Nemesis, requital, penology, retributive justice, lash, scaffold, imprisonment, transportation, banishment, expulsion, exile, involuntary exile, ostracism, penal servitude, hard labor, galleys, beating, flagellation, fustigation, gantlet, strappado, estrapade, bastinado, argumentum baculinum, stick law, rap on the knuckles, box on the ear, blow, stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel, slap, slap in the face, wipe, douse, coup de grace, torture, rack, picket, picketing, dragonnade, capital punishment, execution, lethal injection, the gas chamber, hanging, electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines, decapitation, decollation, garrotte, garrotto, crucifixion, impalement, firing squad, martyrdom, auto-da-fe, noyade, happy dispatch, hara-kiri, seppuku, drinking the hemlock, punishing, penal, punitory, punitive, inflictive, castigatory, punished, Int, a la lanterne!, culpan paena premit comes, eating the bitter bread of banishment, gravis ira regum est semper, sera tamen tacitis paena venit pedibus, suo sibi gladio hunc jugulo.