PUNISH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does punish mean? 

• PUNISH (verb)
  The verb PUNISH has 1 sense:

1. impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on

  Familiarity information: PUNISH used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PUNISH (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they punish    ... he / she / it punishes   
Past simple: punished   
Past participle: punished   
-ing form: punishing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

penalise; penalize; punish

Context example:

we had to punish the dog for soiling the floor again

"Punish" entails doing...:

approximate; estimate; gauge; guess; judge (judge tentatively or form an estimate of (quantities or time))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "punish"):

avenge; retaliate; revenge (take revenge for a perceived wrong)

tar-and-feather (smear the body of (someone) with tar and feathers; done in some societies as punishment)

execute; put to death (kill as a means of socially sanctioned punishment)

pillory (punish by putting in a pillory)

castigate (inflict severe punishment on)

amerce (punish with an arbitrary penalty)

victimise; victimize (punish unjustly)

scourge (punish severely; excoriate)

correct; discipline; sort out (punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

punishment (the act of punishing)

punitive; punitory (inflicting punishment)

 Context examples 

He came between him and the shirks he should have punished.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

I cannot endure it—let me be punished some other way!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“Not wretch enough yet!” answered the sparrow as she flew away; “now will I plague and punish thee at thy own house.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Her mother financed the settlement, you see, so the girl wasn't afraid of being punished for letting me go.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

There might be only ten or fifteen men altogether, he said, but the will of the majority became the law for the whole ten or fifteen, and whoever violated that will was punished.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

No doubt they want his professional services, but, having used him, they may be inclined to punish him for what they will regard as his treachery.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Children should not be punished for wetting the bed.

(Bedwetting, NIH)

And so it came that White Fang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

“We can all plague and punish one another. Tease him—laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.”

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Yet it was by these that I was punished.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)