Word.ws English Dictionary

punitivism

punitivism noun: support for the expansion and strengthening of criminal penalties, especially as opposed to other methods of addressing crime.

Noun

punitivism (uncountable)

  1. Support for the expansion and strengthening of criminal penalties, especially as opposed to other methods of addressing crime.

Origin of punitivism

punitive + -ism

Questions about punitivism

What does punitivism mean?
Punitivism means support for the expansion and strengthening of criminal penalties, especially as opposed to other methods of addressing crime.
What part of speech is punitivism?
Punitivism is a noun.

Words near punitivism in the dictionary

  1. punitive
  2. punitive populism
  3. punitive tariff
  4. punitively
  5. punitiveness
  6. punitivism
  7. punitivity
  8. punitory
  9. Punitovci
  10. punity
  11. punja

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: punitivism (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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