Jail is a very harsh punitive measure.
Source: tatoeba (619123)
Punitive
//ˈpju.nɪ.tɪv//
Synonyms for "punitive" (45 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (9)
Strong matches (14)
Related words (22)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
1 entriesMore specific
2 entriesAntonyms
1 entriesRelated terms
5 entriesderived
8 entrieshas context
2 entriesrelated to
4 entriessimilar
12 entriesTranslations
16 translations across 15 languages.
Bulgarian
1 entries- наказателен adj (punishing)
Catalan
1 entries- punitiu adj (punishing)
Czech
1 entries- trestný adj (punishing)
Esperanto
1 entries- puna adj (punishing)
French
1 entries- punitif adj (punishing)
German
2 entries- Straf adj (punishing)
- strafend adj (punishing)
Greek
1 entries- ποινικός adj (punishing)
Polish
1 entries- karny adj (punishing)
Portuguese
1 entries- punitivo adj (punishing)
Romanian
1 entries- punitiv adj (punishing)
Russian
1 entries- кара́тельный adj (punishing)
Spanish
1 entries- punitivo adj (punishing)
Swedish
1 entries- straff adj (punishing)
Ukrainian
1 entries- кара́льний adj (punishing)
Welsh
1 entries- cosbol adj (punishing)
Sample sentences
11 total sentences available.
We award punitive damages in the amount of two million dollars.
Source: tatoeba (2251985)
There’s been no claim for punitive damages, only compensatory.
Source: tatoeba (2313186)
The British organized a punitive expedition.
Source: tatoeba (10103268)
Showing 4 of 11 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.