punish

present singular third person punishes · participle present punishing · participle past punished · past punished · alternative obsolete punishe

1. transitiveTo cause (a child, student, or someone else being looked after, or a suspect or criminal) to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent, teacher, or police officer).

   If a prince violates the law, then he must be punished like an ordinary person.

   4 more examples

   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.

   1818, William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, page 255

   The law needs to punish this behaviour as a deterrent to others.

   2007, Matthew Weait, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission, Routledge, →ISBN, page 80

   But officials here maintain that their methods do make a difference, and they follow it up with post-release programs. The aim of Bastoy is not to punish or seek revenge, Nilsen said. The only punishment is to take away the prisoner’s right to be a free member of society.

   2012 May 24, John D. Sutter, “Welcome to the world’s nicest prison”, in CNN

   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.

   2017, Joyce Carol Oates, Double Delight, Open Road Media, →ISBN

   Synonyms: castigate, penalize, pillory

2. figurativelytransitiveTo treat harshly and unfairly.

   The rider who comes back on his horse in mid-air over a fence is punishing his horse severely.

   2009, Gordon Wright, Learning to Ride, Hunt, and Show, Skyhorse Publishing Inc., →ISBN, page 44

   3 more examples

   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.

   1994, Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 68

   Homer, moreover, gives the impression that the Sun punished Odysseus's men; but we are later told that the Sun cannot punish individual men […]

   2008, Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, →ISBN, page 5

   RDG explains: "From April 1 2026, the following tickets, Anytime, Off-Peak, Day Travelcards and most Ranger and Rover tickets, will no longer be refundable on the day they become valid for travel." It calls the £40m it thinks it loses "refund abuse", which it explains as "refunds on tickets that have been used but not scanned or endorsed, where a customer falsely states that they did not travel". I'm sure such abuse takes place (and that it's done by passengers). But RDG is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut and punishing many millions of honest passengers by making tickets more restrictive.

   2026 March 18, Philip Haigh, “Tickets please: 2p per scan to offset fraudulent refunds?”, in RAIL, number 1057, page 48

   Synonyms: mistreat

3. colloquialtransitiveTo handle or beat severely; to maul.
4. colloquialtransitiveTo consume a large quantity of.

   A few moments later, we were all sitting around the veranda of the hunters' dining hall, punishing the gin, as usual.

   1970, Doc Greene, The Memory Collector, page 49