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:
Both bills were sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful trial lawyer trade group that says it wants to beef up punishment for misconduct.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
"Given the nature of the terminal and uncurable medical condition of Mr. Mladic and his short-term life expectancy, continued detention serves no legitimate purpose, and approaches inhuman treatment and punishment," his team argued.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
“Those five months were 50 years’ worth of fun,” Tahereh says of the period between crime and punishment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
It is a significant punishment, underlining how annoyed Fifa are at having their showpiece occasion, broadcast to an estimated 1.5bn people globally, tarnished by such awful scenes.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
A small percentage included men awaiting court-martial, who joined to escape punishment.
From "Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
The process to terminate controllers can be lengthy and result in lighter punishments or reversals, as has happened in some cases this year, people familiar with the matter said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
Blumenfield, who authored a motion to start the process, called the law, along with its punishments of a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail, “uncommonly silly.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
The king of Ithaca’s pride in his ingenious trick is steadily sapped by a series of cosmic punishments.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2026
On other occasions, Thomas has insisted that the Eighth Amendment be interpreted in light of the punishments permitted at the time it was written.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
He did not care about finding his captor, repaying insults, or inflicting eternal punishments.
From "When the Sea Turned to Silver" by Grace Lin
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.
