Underrestrain
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To fail to restrain sufficiently.
"By enabling us to divert certain criminals from the penal to the psychiatric system, the fiction of mental illness as destroyer of mens rea protects us from guilt for punishing guilty but crazy criminals; by eschewing formally punishing—and, as a result, by capriciously underrestraining and overrestraining—persons guilty of crimes, this fiction endangers the safety of our persons and property and the integrity of our political system."
Example
More examples"By enabling us to divert certain criminals from the penal to the psychiatric system, the fiction of mental illness as destroyer of mens rea protects us from guilt for punishing guilty but crazy criminals; by eschewing formally punishing—and, as a result, by capriciously underrestraining and overrestraining—persons guilty of crimes, this fiction endangers the safety of our persons and property and the integrity of our political system."
Etymology
From under- + restrain.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.