Word Type

Adjective

Adjective

Verb

Noun

The word "punishing" can be used as adjective, adjective, verb and noun.

Word Relationships

Causes

anger anger from punished become resentful feel guilty feel sorry for get angry getting punished going to jail hatred hoping won't seek revenge person to fall pleasure public outrage resentment retribution revenge stop doing bad things stress

Derived Terms

nonpunishing punishingly punishingness unpunishing

Derived From

punish

Inflected/Variant Forms

punish

Prerequisites

action control corner did wrong force knowledge of guilt method of punishment momentum taking action against using force

Subevents

avoid feel bad feel sad hit hit with paddle hurt hurting ignore injure person make sit in corner make things unpleasant for may feel bad too might cry sadness scolding sending to room spank take away privilege take away there allowance withhold priviledges yell yell at

Type Of (IsA)

irreflexive action performing social event

Related Terms

arduous debilitating demanding gruelling harsh punish punishment

Similar Terms

effortful

Synonym Network

backbreaking

Used For

authoritarian being nasty correcting bad behavior correcting behavior court system demonstrating power deterrence deterring from repeating mistake did fault disobeying rules education enforcing justice enforcing law or rule establishing dominance getting out of way helping to control hurting judgemental judicial system justice making work harder modifying behavior negative conditioning payback penal subsystem of judiciary penalizing for committing crime pleasure if one sadistic reducing crime retribution revenge swinging on swing teaching teaching errors of someones actions teaching lesson vengance vindictive when have broken law wrathful

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.