Punished

How to spell punished

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce punished

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does punished mean?

1. verbImposed a penalty on someone for an offence or fault, or treated something harshly.

Punished in a sentence

• The court punished the driver with a heavy fine.

• As a child she was punished for staying out late.

Where does punished come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb punire, meaning 'to inflict a penalty on' or 'to take vengeance for', which was built on the noun poena, meaning 'penalty' or 'pain'. That same poena root sits behind the English words 'penalty', 'penance', and even 'pain', all of which share the idea of a price paid for wrongdoing. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French puniss-, the stretched stem of punir, and the past form 'punished' simply adds the regular -ed ending. The single n and the -ished spelling are the small traps: the Latin poena had no double letters, so punish keeps just one n. Because the base verb is so familiar, the past tense rarely causes trouble beyond remembering that the e is dropped before the -ed is added.

How the word is built

• puni- (from Latin punire: to inflict a penalty)
• -sh (verb-forming spelling of the stem)
• -ed (past tense suffix)