How to use castigate in a sentence

11 example sentences · verb, adjective

Castigate means to punish or reprimand someone severely. Example: “Perhaps disarmed by his own scandalous behaviour with Bathsheba, he was in no position to castigate his son for a similar fault.”

Examples of castigate by meaning

verbTo punish or reprimand someone severely.

Perhaps disarmed by his own scandalous behaviour with Bathsheba, he was in no position to castigate his son for a similar fault.1999, Robert P. Gordon, I & II Samuel: A Commentary, Zondervan, page 264

verbTo execrate or condemn something in a harsh manner, especially by public criticism.

But despite all this, for Barkan, the universalist notion of an 'Ottoman feudalism' was anathema: he castigated this idea as the concentrated expression of the anti-Ottomanism of the Kemalist Enlightenment.2016, Halil Berktay, Suraiya Faroqhi, New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History, Routledge, page 150
Lewis should have castigated the reasoning employed rather than the emotion, which offers no clue as to which side of the argument a person will adopt.2001, Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schorr, Tom Johnstone, Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, Oxford University Press...
From the outset, this issue becomes an often double-edged sword wherein Japan is both valorized and castigated.2012, James King, Under Foreign Eyes: Western Cinematic Adaptations of Postwar Japan, John Hunt Publishing, page 1

More sentences with castigate

REM says that "somebody" should castigate the media for using "hacker" when they mean "cracker".1983 November 2, Ian, “Re: Hackers victim of Newspeak (HUMAN-NETS Digest V6 #64)”, in fa.human-nets (Usenet), retrieved 15 Dec 2016…. From the entry hackerdom
The motto of the Fletcherites was “Nature will castigate those who don't masticate.”1957, Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Dover, page 221. From the entry fletcherite
Of course they would castigate the most equanimitable Pope ever.2020 September 20, Anthropomorph (@Anthr0p0m0rph), Twitter, archived from the original on 12 Jun 2023. From the entry equanimitable
In her typical appearances on Fox News, Jeanine Pirro, a former Republican district attorney, reserves her highest dudgeon for castigating liberals and lamenting the demise of law and order.2020 May 30, Michael M. Grynbaum, Annie Karni, Jeremy W. Peters, “What Top Conservatives Are Saying About George Floyd and Police…. From the entry dudgeon
The war between Lullists and Ramists represents a variation on the French–Italian theme, for the Lullists castigated Rameau’s music for its Italian virtuosity and eroticism devoid of true expression.2017, Georgia Cowart, “Opera under the Old Regime”, in Opera Re-Made, 1700–1750, page 173. From the entry Ramist
They are at least logical that say to castigate folly you must first exhibit folly as a castigable thing, and in showing folly you thus cause more folly.1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun. From the entry castigable
Lenin castigated, in friend and foe alike, any tendency to compromise even verbally with religion, or to side-step ontological questions on the ground that they were wrongly formulated or insoluble.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford…. From the entry verbally

Meaning of castigate

verb To punish or reprimand someone severely.
verb To execrate or condemn something in a harsh manner, especially by public criticism.
verb To revise or make corrections to a publication.

Full definition of castigate

Questions about castigate in a sentence

How do you use castigate in a sentence?: Castigate is used as a verb and adjective. For example: “Perhaps disarmed by his own scandalous behaviour with Bathsheba, he was in no position to castigate his son for a similar fault.”
What is a short sentence with castigate?: “Of course they would castigate the most equanimitable Pope ever.”
What does castigate mean?: Castigate means to punish or reprimand someone severely.

Adapted from Wiktionary: castigate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use castigate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/castigate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.