different between rectify vs punish

English

Etymology

From Middle English rectifien, from Anglo-Norman rectifiier, rectefier (“to make straight”), from Medieval Latin r?ctific? (“to make right”), from Latin r?ctus (“straight”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???kt??fa?/

Verb

rectify (third-person singular simple present rectifies, present participle rectifying, simple past and past participle rectified)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To heal (an organ or part of the body). [14th-18th c.]
2. (transitive) To restore (someone or something) to its proper condition; to straighten out, to set right. [from 16th c.]
3. (transitive) To remedy or fix (an undesirable state of affairs, situation etc.). [from 15th c.]

4. (transitive, chemistry) To purify or refine (a substance) by distillation. [from 15th c.]
5. (transitive) To correct or amend (a mistake, defect etc.). [from 16th c.]
6. (transitive, now rare) To correct (someone who is mistaken). [from 16th c.]
   • 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.3:

     For thus their Sense informeth them, and herein their Reason cannot Rectifie them; and therefore hopelessly continuing in mistakes, they live and die in their absurdities […]

7. (transitive, geodesy, historical) To adjust (a globe or sundial) to prepare for the solution of a proposed problem. [from 16th c.]
8. (transitive, electronics) To convert (alternating current) into direct current. [from 19th c.]
9. (transitive, mathematics) To determine the length of a curve included between two limits.
10. (transitive) To produce (as factitious gin or brandy) by redistilling bad wines or strong spirits (whisky, rum, etc.) with flavourings.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:repair

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

• certify, cretify

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