Word.ws English Dictionary

punishingly

punishingly adverb: so as to punish.

Adverb

punishingly (comparative more punishingly, superlative most punishingly)

  1. So as to punish.
  2. In a way that is tiring or exhausting.
    • punishingly hot weather
    • Bill Clinton was elected on an untenable premise: that it is the job of the President to manage the economy. Yes, that is what we have come to expect of Presidents; but this expectation, the author argues, is punishingly at variance with anything any President can credibly deliver[.]1993 July, Charles R. Morris, “It's Not the Economy, Stupid”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, archived from the original on 28 Nov 2025

Forms of punishingly

comparativemore punishingly
superlativemost punishingly

Origin of punishingly

From punishing + -ly.

Questions about punishingly

What does punishingly mean?
Punishingly means so as to punish.
What part of speech is punishingly?
Punishingly is an adverb.

Words near punishingly in the dictionary

  1. punishers
  2. punishes
  3. punishest
  4. punisheth
  5. punishing
  6. punishingly
  7. punishingness
  8. punishings
  9. punishment
  10. punishment pass
  11. punishmental

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: punishingly (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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