punisht

punisht is the obsolete form of punished.

punisht is the simple past and past participle of punish.

Meaning of punished

punished (comparative more punished, superlative most punished)

punish (third-person singular simple present punishes, present participle punishing, simple past and past participle punished)

(transitive) To cause (a child, student, or someone else being looked after, or a suspect or criminal) to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent, teacher, or police officer).
- If a prince violates the law, then he must be punished like an ordinary person.
Synonyms:

castigate, penalize, pillory
(figuratively, transitive) To treat harshly and unfairly.
- But each effort that Anna makes —and she has attempted many— meets with obstacles from a welfare bureaucracy that punishes single mothers for initiative and partial economic self-sufficiency.1994, Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 68
Synonyms:

mistreat
(colloquial, transitive) To handle or beat severely; to maul.
(colloquial, transitive) To consume a large quantity of.
- A few moments later, we were all sitting around the veranda of the hunters' dining hall, punishing the gin, as usual.1970, Doc Greene, The Memory Collector, page 49

comparative	more punisht
superlative	most punisht

What is punisht the obsolete form of?: Punisht is the obsolete form of punished.

Adapted from Wiktionary: punisht (page history and authors); punished (page history and authors); punish (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “punisht.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/punisht. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.