Punishment

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: pun=ish=ment

CIDE DICTIONARY

Punishment, n. 

•  The act of punishing.  [1913 Webster]
•  Any pain, suffering, or loss inflicted on a person because of a crime or offense.  [1913 Webster]

  "I never gave them condign punishment."  [1913 Webster]

  "The rewards and punishments of another life."  [1913 Webster]
•  A penalty inflicted by a court of justice on a convicted offender as a just retribution, and incidentally for the purposes of reformation and prevention.  [1913 Webster]
•  Severe, rough, or disastrous treatment.  [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

Punishment, n.
1 the act or an instance of punishing; the condition of being punished.
2 the loss or suffering inflicted in this.
3 colloq. severe treatment or suffering.

Etymology

ME f. AF & OF punissement f. punir

THESAURUS

Punishment

abuse, admonishment, admonition, amercement, avengement, banishment, battering, beating, caning, cashiering, castigating, castigation, chastening, chastisement, chastising, comeuppance, compensation, correction, criticism, damage, desert, deserts, discipline, disciplining, dressing-down, electrocution, excommunication, execution, exile, fine, flogging, hanging, harm, imprisonment, incarceration, injury, just deserts, lashing, maltreatment, mauling, mulct, paddling, penal retribution, penalization, penalty, penance, price, punition, quittance, rebuke, recompense, reprisal, reproof, requital, retribution, revenge, reward, rod, scolding, scourging, sentence, sentencing, spanking, thrashing, torture, trouncing, what for, what is due, what is merited, whipping

ROGET THESAURUS

Punishment

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.