telishment
/ˈtɛlɪʃmənt/
telishment noun: the act or institution of punishing the innocent for the sake of providing deterrence.
Noun
telishment (usually uncountable, plural telishments)
- The act or institution of punishing the innocent for the sake of providing deterrence.
- Try to imagine, then, an institution (which we may call “telishment”) which is such that the officials set up by it have authority to arrange a trial for the condemnation of an innocent man whenever they are of the opinion that doing so would be in the best interests of society.1955, John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules”, in The Philosophical Review, LXIV, № 1, page 11
- And I would say the same about punishments — not telishments, but punishments — in which the penalty is far too severe.1961, John Hospers, Human Conduct: An Introduction to the Problems of Ethics, page 457
Forms of telishment
| plural | telishments |
|---|
Origin of telishment
Coined by John Rawls in his 1955 paper “Two Concepts of Rules”. Probably a portmanteau of the Ancient Greek τέλος (télos, “result; end; loosely, the greater good”) and the English (pun)ishment. Compare telish.
Questions about telishment
- What does telishment mean?
- Telishment means the act or institution of punishing the innocent for the sake of providing deterrence.
- What part of speech is telishment?
- Telishment is a noun.
- How do you pronounce telishment?
- Telishment is pronounced /ˈtɛlɪʃmənt/.
- What is the plural of telishment?
- The plural of telishment is telishments.
Words near telishment in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: telishment (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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