Word.ws English Dictionary

collective punishment

collective punishment noun: a form of punishment whereby a suspected perpetrator's peers are targeted.

Noun

collective punishment (countable and uncountable, plural collective punishments)

  1. A form of punishment whereby a suspected perpetrator's peers are targeted.
    • The Israeli army claims that its offensive, now being stepped up is a “war on terror”; UN experts say it amounts to collective punishment.2023 October 23, Lana Bastašić, “I grew up in Bosnia, amid fear and hatred of Muslims. Now I see Germany’s mistakes over Gaza”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Synonyms of collective punishment

Forms of collective punishment

pluralcollective punishments

Questions about collective punishment

What does collective punishment mean?
Collective punishment means a form of punishment whereby a suspected perpetrator's peers are targeted.
What part of speech is collective punishment?
Collective punishment is a noun.
What is the plural of collective punishment?
The plural of collective punishment is collective punishments.

Words near collective punishment in the dictionary

  1. collective nouns
  2. collective number
  3. collective numbers
  4. collective numeral
  5. collective numerals
  6. collective punishment
  7. collective punishments
  8. collective security
  9. Collective Security Treaty Organisation
  10. collective species
  11. collective title

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: collective punishment (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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