chastise

present singular third person chastises · participle present chastising · participle past chastised · past chastised · alternative nonstandard obsolete chastize

1. transitiveTo punish, especially by corporal punishment.

   An army was sent to chastise an unoffending people; to subdue an imaginary insurrection.

   1885 May 2, John Thomas Caine, edited by John Irvine, “Mormon” Protest Against Injustice: An Appeal for Constitutional and Religious Liberty, published 1885, page 12

   4 more examples

   And now whereas my father did lade you with a heauy yoke, I wil adde to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whippes, but I will chastise you with scorpions.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Kings 12:11

   Thus only the husband is in a position to chastise her, for his own relatives may not exert any physical force over her.

   1958, Elizabeth Colson, Marriage and the Family among the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia, page 142

   If even Israel, the people chosen to be God’s own, scorned and neglected the values God had revealed to be what God willed and desired, then God would marshal the forces of history to chastise them.

   1996, William P. Loewe, The College Student’s Introduction to Christology, →ISBN, page 46

   “There is a man who must be chastised,” she says softly, lightly. “Chastised in a physical way. It should not be difficult. Not for you.”

   2018, Nyx Smith, Shadowrun Legends: Striper Assassin, Catalyst Game Labs

   Synonyms: chasten, penalize, amerce, castigate, chasten, come down on, correct, fix someone's wagon

2. transitiveTo castigate; to scold or censure.

   My urban, academic friends chastise me for romanticizing rural life.

   1995, Douglas E. Foley, The Heartland Chronicles, →ISBN, page viii

   3 more examples

   She feels definitely that Lung Shing is her town, and is not hesitant to chastise people who she thinks are not behaving properly—such as, for example, a woman using loud, vulgar language on the street—although in so doing she may only turn the direction of abuse on herself.

   1975, Cornelius Osgood, The Chinese: A Study of a Hong Kong Community, volume 2, →ISBN, page 485

   Only last year Attorney General Edwin Meese chastised the Supreme Court for a series of decisions based on the legal doctrine of “indoctrination”—that is, that the 14th Amendment requires the states to respect the prohibitions on abuse of power that the Bill of Rights had originally applied to the federal government.

   1987 September, Eric Foner, The Second American Revolution; republished as “The Second American Revolution”, in Bertell Ollman, Jonathan Birnbaum, editors, The United States Constitution: 200 Years of […] Socialist Criticism, 1990, →ISBN, page 202

   People pop up all the time to boast of their domestic arrangements or chastise others for what they eat or how they get around.

   2021 August 23, Rebecca Solnit, “Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms: admonish, animadvert, bash, bawl out, tilt, clobber, cannonade, slash