Word.ws English Dictionary

overpunishing

overpunishing is the present participle and gerund of overpunish.

Meaning of overpunish

Verb

overpunish (third-person singular simple present overpunishes, present participle overpunishing, simple past and past participle overpunished)

  1. (transitive) To punish excessively; to issue a punishment that is harsher than necessary.
    • After each one of the two cards has been presented, the overpunished child will invariably say that the father (or mother) is going to hit the child with a belt, or fist, or some other implement; the child will feel bad; the child will be mad at the parent; and the child will want to run away, or...1976 March 1, Ralph S. Welsh, “VIOLENCE, PERMISSIVENESS THE OVERPUNISHED CHILD”, in Journal of Pediatric Psychology, volume 1, number 2, →DOI, page 68

Questions about overpunishing

What is overpunishing the present participle and gerund of?
Overpunishing is the present participle and gerund of overpunish.

Words near overpunishing in the dictionary

  1. overpunctuation
  2. overpungent
  3. overpunish
  4. overpunished
  5. overpunishes
  6. overpunishing
  7. overpunishment
  8. overpunishments
  9. overpurchase
  10. overpurchased
  11. overpurchases

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overpunishing (page history and authors); overpunish (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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