Search Result for "punishment": 
Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

1. the act of punishing;
[syn: punishment, penalty, penalization, penalisation]


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Punishment \Pun"ish*ment\, n. 1. The act of punishing. [1913 Webster] 2. Any pain, suffering, or loss inflicted on a person because of a crime or offense. [1913 Webster] I never gave them condign punishment. --Shak. [1913 Webster] The rewards and punishments of another life. --Locke. [1913 Webster] 3. (Law) A penalty inflicted by a court of justice on a convicted offender as a just retribution, and incidentally for the purposes of reformation and prevention. [1913 Webster] 4. Severe, rough, or disastrous treatment. [Colloq. or Slang] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

punishment n 1: the act of punishing [syn: punishment, penalty, penalization, penalisation]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

70 Moby Thesaurus words for "punishment": abuse, admonishment, admonition, amercement, avengement, banishment, battering, beating, caning, cashiering, castigating, castigation, chastening, chastisement, chastising, comeuppance, compensation, correction, criticism, damage, desert, deserts, discipline, disciplining, dressing-down, electrocution, excommunication, execution, exile, fine, flogging, hanging, harm, imprisonment, incarceration, injury, just deserts, lashing, maltreatment, mauling, mulct, paddling, penal retribution, penalization, penalty, penance, price, punition, quittance, rebuke, recompense, reprisal, reproof, requital, retribution, revenge, reward, rod, scolding, scourging, sentence, sentencing, spanking, thrashing, torture, trouncing, what for, what is due, what is merited, whipping
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary:

Punishment The New Testament lays down the general principles of good government, but contains no code of laws for the punishment of offenders. Punishment proceeds on the principle that there is an eternal distinction between right and wrong, and that this distinction must be maintained for its own sake. It is not primarily intended for the reformation of criminals, nor for the purpose of deterring others from sin. These results may be gained, but crime in itself demands punishment. (See MURDER ¯T0002621; THEFT.) Endless, of the impenitent and unbelieving. The rejection of this doctrine "cuts the ground from under the gospel...blots out the attribute of retributive justice; transmutes sin into misfortune instead of guilt; turns all suffering into chastisement; converts the piacular work of Christ into moral influence...The attempt to retain the evangelical theology in connection with it is futile" (Shedd).
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

PUNISHMENT, crim. law. Some pain or penalty warranted by law, inflicted on a person, for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor, or for the omission of the performance of an act required by law, by the judgment and command of some lawful court. 2. The right of society to punish, is derived by Becoaria, Mably, and some others, from a supposed agreement which the persons who composes the primitive societies entered into, in order to keep order and, indeed, the very existence of the state. According to others, it is the interest and duty of man to live in society; to defend this right, society may exert this principle in order to support itself, and this it may do, whenever the acts punishable would endanger the safety of the whole. And Bentham is of opinion that the foundation of this right is laid in public utility or necessity. Delinquents are public enemies, and they must be disarmed and prevented from doing evil, or society must be destroyed. But, if the social compact has ever existed, says Livingston, its end must have been the preservation of the natural rights of the members and, therefore the effects of this fiction are the same with those of the theory which takes abstract justice as the foundation of the right to punish; for, this justice, if well considered, is that which assures to each member of the state, the free exercise of his rights. And if it should be found that utility, the last source from which the right to punish is derived, is so intimately united to justice that it is inseparable from it in the practice of law, it will follow that every system founded on one of these principles must be supported by the others. 3. To attain their social end, punishments should be exemplary, or capable of intimidating those who might be tempted to imitate the guilty; reformatory, or such as should improve the condition of the convicts; personal, or such as are at least calculated to wound the feelings or affect the rights of the relations of the guilty divisible, or capable of being graduated and proportioned to the offence, and the circumstances of each case; reparable, on account of the fallibility of human justice. 4. Punishments are either corporal or not corporal. The former are, death, which is usually denominated capital punishment; imprisonment, which is either with or without labor; vide Penitentiary; whipping, in some states, though to the honor of several of them, it is not tolerated in them; banishment and death. 5. The punishments which are not corporal, are fines; forfeitures; suspension or deprivation of some political or civil right deprivation of office, and being rendered incapable to hold office; compulsion to remove nuisances. 6. The object of punishment is to reform the offender; to deter him and others from committing like offences; and to protect society. Vide 4 Bl. Com. 7 Rutherf. Inst. B. 1, ch. 18. 7. Punishment to be just ought to be graduated to the enormity of the offence. It should never exceed what is requisite to reform the criminal and to protect society; for whatever goes beyond this, is cruelty and revenge, the relic of a barbarous age. All the circumstances under which the offender acted should be considered. Vide Moral Insanity. 8. The constitution of the United States, amendments, art. 8, forbids the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments." 9. It has been well observed by the author of Principles of Penal Law, that "when the rights of human nature are not respected, those of the citizen are gradually disregarded. Those eras are in history found fatal to liberty, in which cruel punishments predominate. Lenity should be the guardian of moderate governments; severe penalties, the instruments of despotism, may give a sudden check to temporary evils, but they have a tendency to extend themselves to every class of crimes, and their frequency hardens the sentiments of the people. Une loi rigoureuse produit des crimes. The excess of the penalty flatters the imagination with the hope of impunity, and thus becomes an advocate with the offender for the perpetrating of the offence." Vide Theorie des Lois Criminelles, ch. 2; Bac. on Crimes and Punishments; Merl. Rep. mot Peine; Dalloz, Dict. mot Peine and Capital crimes. 10. Punishments are infamous or not infamous. The former continue through life, unless the offender has been pardoned, and are not dependent on the length of time for which the party has been sentenced to suffer imprisonment; a person convicted of a felony, perjury, and other infamous crimes cannot, therefore, be a witness nor hold any office, although the period for which he may have been sentenced to imprisonment, may have expired by lapse of time. As to the effect of a pardon, vide Pardon. 11. Those punishments which are not infamous, are such as are inflicted on persons for misdemeanors, such as assaults and batteries, libels, and the like. Vide Crimes; Infamy; Penitentiary.