Overpunish
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To punish excessively; to issue a punishment that is harsher than necessary. transitive
"After each one of the two cards has been presented, the overpunished child will invariably say that the father (or mother) is going to hit the child with a belt, or fist, or some other implement; the child will feel bad; the child will be mad at the parent; and the child will want to run away, or less commonly, want to strike the parent back."
Example
More examples"After each one of the two cards has been presented, the overpunished child will invariably say that the father (or mother) is going to hit the child with a belt, or fist, or some other implement; the child will feel bad; the child will be mad at the parent; and the child will want to run away, or less commonly, want to strike the parent back."
Etymology
From over- + punish.
More for "overpunish"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.