Word.ws English Dictionary

overpunishment

overpunishment noun: excessive punishment.

Noun

overpunishment (countable and uncountable, plural overpunishments)

  1. Excessive punishment.
    • Parental overpunishment could very well be the major factor in producing the distractability, the impulsivity, the social incompetence, and above all, the angry anti-authority attitudes so commonly seen in delinquent misconduct.1976 March 1, Ralph S. Welsh, “VIOLENCE, PERMISSIVENESS THE OVERPUNISHED CHILD”, in Journal of Pediatric Psychology, volume 1, number 2, →DOI, page 68

Forms of overpunishment

pluraloverpunishments

Origin of overpunishment

From over- + punishment.

Questions about overpunishment

What does overpunishment mean?
Overpunishment means excessive punishment.
What part of speech is overpunishment?
Overpunishment is a noun.
What is the plural of overpunishment?
The plural of overpunishment is overpunishments.

Words near overpunishment in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overpunishment (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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