different between instruct vs punish

English

Etymology

From Latin ?nstr?ctus, perfect passive participle of ?nstru? (“I instruct; I arrange, furnish, or provide”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??n?st??kt/
• Rhymes: -?kt

Verb

instruct (third-person singular simple present instructs, present participle instructing, simple past and past participle instructed)

1. (transitive) To teach by giving instructions.

   Synonyms: educate, guide

   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 3,^[1]

     Supply me with the habit and instruct me

     How I may formally in person bear me

     Like a true friar.

   • 1682, Aphra Behn, The False Count, London: Jacob Tonson, Act III, Scene 2, p. 33,^[2]

     What a dishonour’s this, to me, to have so Dull a Father, that needs to be instructed in his Duty.

   • 1751, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 156, 14 September, 1751, in Volume 5, London: J. Payne and J. Bouquet, 1752, p. 177,^[3]

     […] the design of tragedy is to instruct by moving the passions,

   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter 10,^[4]

     […] I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you.

   • 1974, Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, New York: William Morrow, Part 4, Chapter 29, p. 353,^[5]

     At the Laundromat I instruct Chris on how to operate the drier, start the washing machines […]

2. (transitive) To tell (someone) what they must or should do.

   Synonyms: command, direct, order

   Usage note: "instruct" is less forceful than "order", but weightier than "advise"

   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, Act III, Scene 1,^[6]

     What, shall a child instruct you what to do?

   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 39,^[7]

     All the servants were instructed to address her as “Mum,” or “Madam” […]

   • 1989, John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, New York: Ballantine, 1997, Chapter 5, p. 195,^[8]

     Observing that the Christ Child’s nose was running, she deftly wiped it; then she held the handkerchief in place, while instructing him to “blow.”

Related terms

Translations

Noun

instruct (plural instructs)

1. (obsolete) Instruction.

Adjective

instruct (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Arranged; furnished; provided.
   • c. 1615, George Chapman (translator), Homer’s Odysses, London: Nathaniell Butter, Book 4, p. 62,^[9]

     For he had neither ship, instruct with oares,

     Nor men to fetch him from those stranger shores.

2. (obsolete) Instructed; taught; enlightened.
   • 1671, John Milton, Paradise Regained, London: John Starkey, Book 1, lines 438-441, p. 24,^[10]

     Who ever by consulting at thy shrine

     Return’d the wiser, or the more instruct

     To flye or follow what concern’d him most,

     And run not sooner to his fatal snare?

Anagrams

• unstrict

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