different between amend vs punish

English

Etymology

From Middle English amenden, from Old French amender, from Latin ?mend? (“free from faults”), from ex (“from, out of”) + mendum (“fault”). Compare aphetic mend.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /??m?nd/
• Rhymes: -?nd

Verb

amend (third-person singular simple present amends, present participle amending, simple past and past participle amended)

1. (transitive) To make better; improve.
   • 1594, William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece,^[1]

     Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;

     Mar not the thing that cannot be amended.

   • 1820, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter 13,^[2]

     We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
2. (intransitive) To become better.
3. (obsolete, transitive) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.x:

     But Paridell complaynd, that his late fight / With Britomart, so sore did him offend, / That ryde he could not, till his hurts he did amend.
4. (obsolete, intransitive) To be healed, to be cured, to recover (from an illness).
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3,^[3]

     Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls

     That stay his cure: their malady convinces

     The great assay of art; but at his touch—

     Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand—

     They presently amend.

5. (transitive) To make a formal alteration (in legislation, a report, etc.) by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
   • 1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order, Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co., Article III, Section 23, p. 46,^[4]

     The following motions cannot be amended:

   • 1990, Doug Hoyle, Hansard, Trade Union Act, 1984, Amendment no. 2, 4 July, 1990,^[5]

     It is necessary to amend the Act to preserve the spirit in which it was first passed into law […]

Synonyms

• ameliorate
• correct
• improve
• See also Thesaurus:improve
• See also Thesaurus:repair

Related terms

Translations

Noun

amend (plural amends)

1. (usually in the plural) An act of righting a wrong; compensation.

References

• amend at OneLook Dictionary Search
• amend in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• amend in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Edman, Mande, Medan, ad-men, admen, deman, maned, menad, named

English

Alternative forms

• punishe (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English punischen, from Anglo-Norman, Old French puniss-, stem of some of the conjugated forms of punir, from Latin puni? (“to inflict punishment upon”), from poena (“punishment, penalty”); see pain.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?n??/
• Hyphenation: pun?ish

Verb

punish (third-person singular simple present punishes, present participle punishing, simple past and past participle punished)

1. (transitive) To cause to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action.
   • 1818, William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, page 255

     It was not from the want of proper laws that dangerous principles had been disseminated, and had assumed a threatening aspect, but because those laws had not been employed by the executive power to remedy the evil, and to punish the offenders.

   • 2007, Matthew Weait, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission, Routledge (?ISBN), page 80

     The law needs to punish this behaviour as a deterrent to others.

   • 2017, Joyce Carol Oates, Double Delight, Open Road Media (?ISBN)

     His mother had punished him when he'd deserved it. She'd loved him, he was “all she had,” but she'd punished him, too.

   Synonym: castigate

2. (transitive, figuratively) To treat harshly and unfairly.
   • 1994, Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, University of Chicago Press (?ISBN), page 68

     But each effort that Anna makes —and she has attempted many— meets with obstacles from a welfare bureaucracy that punishes single mothers for initiative and partial economic self-sufficiency.

   • 2008, Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (?ISBN), page 5

     Homer, moreover, gives the impression that the Sun punished Odysseus's men; but we are later told that the Sun cannot punish individual men […]

   • 2009, Gordon Wright, Learning to Ride, Hunt, and Show, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. (?ISBN), page 44

     The rider who comes back on his horse in mid-air over a fence is punishing his horse severely.

   Synonym: mistreat

3. (transitive, colloquial) To handle or beat severely; to maul.
4. (transitive, colloquial) To consume a large quantity of.
   • 1970, Doc Greene, The Memory Collector (page 49)

     A few moments later, we were all sitting around the veranda of the hunters' dining hall, punishing the gin, as usual.

Derived terms

• punishable
• punisher (noun)
• punishing
• punishment (noun)
• telish, telishment

Related terms

• pain

Translations

Further reading

• punish in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• punish in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• push in, push-in, pushin', unship