Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Inflicting or intended to inflict punishment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Punishing, or tending to punishment; punitive.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Punishing; tending to punishment; punitive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective punitive; tending to punish

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective inflicting punishment

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin pūnītus, from past participle of pūnīre, to punish; see punish.]

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Examples

  • The preventive function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being which would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some form or other of delinquency.

    On Liberty 2002

  • [124] A constant, then, and uniform course of just operation in punishing sin proves punitory justice to be essentially inherent in God.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • Socinian speaks against; but rather to this, that as punitory justice is a natural attribute of God, a very considerable portion of his essential glory, yea, a well-known name of God, he can “by no means clear the guilty,” unless he were to deny himself, and deliver up his glory to another, — than which nothing is farther from God.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • God is said to forgive sins is the justice of faithfulness, which has the foundation of its exercise in this punitory justice: which being satisfied,

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • To owe, then, “the good of punitory justice to the universe,” is to owe the good of an essential attribute to his own glory.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • But in the whole matter of salvation by the Mediator, God-man, there is no excellence of God, no essential property, no attribute of his nature, the glory of which is the chief end of all his works, that he hath more clearly and eminently displayed than this punitory justice.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • But, “That punitory justice,” say they, “which you assign as the source of punishment, is opposite to mercy.”

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • In almost all his writings he opposes this punitory justice.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • But if the learned author mean this, that God ought to preserve his own right and dominion over the universe, and that this is just, his nature so requiring him, but that it cannot be done, supposing sin to exist, without the exercise of punitory justice, and then that those who affirm this indirectly deny the existence of God, — this is easy for any one to assert, but not so easy to prove.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

  • But the punishment of Christ, made sin for us, is an act of punitory justice; nor, upon the supposition that he was received in our room as our surety, could it be otherwise.

    A Dissertation on Divine Justice 1616-1683 1967

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