Telishment
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The act or institution of punishing the innocent for the sake of providing deterrence. uncountable, usually
"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."
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
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.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.