noun
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a penalty or sanction given for any crime or offence
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the act of punishing or state of being punished
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informal rough treatment
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psychol any aversive stimulus administered to an organism as part of training
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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nonpunishmentnoun
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overpunishmentnoun
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prepunishmentnoun
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repunishmentnoun
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self-punishmentnoun
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propunishmentadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of punishment
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English punysshement, from Anglo-French punisement, Old French punissement; equivalent to punish + -ment
Explanation
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."
Vocabulary lists containing punishment
Psychology
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"Nadia the Willful"
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The House of Hades
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
By his own account to people close to him, symptoms emerged around the same weeks as the punishment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
"You could say that my falling transformed a yellow card into a red card. But in fact, the most appropriate punishment was a yellow one."
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
This is not the freezer as bunker, or the freezer as punishment, or the freezer as the place where leftovers go to await their eventual quiet disposal.
From Salon ● Jul. 11, 2026
California established mental health diversion in 2018 to prioritize treatment over punishment for eligible defendants whose mental illness contributed to their alleged offenses.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
“It’s my punishment for eavesdropping. I accept it.”
From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron
He touts his efforts to impose stricter punishments on Palestinian detainees on social media.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Excommunication is one of the harshest punishments that can be given by the Church, effectively expelling the offender from the religion and excluding them from Catholic life.
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026
Divine did not say why he felt compelled to state his beliefs about permissible punishments.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
They create systems of rewards and punishments, and timers for getting things done quickly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 2026
Certainly, outlawing barbaric punishments was evidence of progress in penal practice, and perhaps of progress in American civilization as well.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
