English

Alternative forms

• chastizement

Noun

chastisement ‎(plural chastisements)

1. The act of chastising; rebuke; punishment.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 1,

     Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods

     On late offenders, that he now doth lack

     The very instruments of chastisement;

     So that his power, like to a fangless lion,

     May offer, but not hold.

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Isaiah 53:5,

     But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

   • 1820, Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,”

     All this he called “doing his duty by their parents;” and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that “he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.”

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case,

     Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which my chastisement approached.

   • 1929, Winston Churchill, Hansard, 24 December, 1929,

     It seems to me that as he does not respond to this extremely conciliatory treatment it may be well to try whether a change of treatment might not produce a more satisfactory result. If praise and courtesy only result in narrow, bitter partisanship, perhaps a little well-merited chastisement may procure some geniality.

Derived terms

• self-chastisement

Translations