Punishment

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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.]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  punishment
       n : the act of punishing [syn: {penalty}, {penalization}, {penalisation}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  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
  
  

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  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
     ŻT0002621; {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).
     

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  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.