PENALIZE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does penalize mean? 

• PENALIZE (verb)
  The verb PENALIZE has 1 sense:

1. impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on

  Familiarity information: PENALIZE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PENALIZE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they penalize    ... he / she / it penalizes   
Past simple: penalized   
Past participle: penalized   
-ing form: penalizing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

penalise; penalize; punish

Context example:

we had to punish the dog for soiling the floor again

"Penalize" entails doing...:

approximate; estimate; gauge; guess; judge (judge tentatively or form an estimate of (quantities or time))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "penalize"):

avenge; retaliate; revenge (take revenge for a perceived wrong)

tar-and-feather (smear the body of (someone) with tar and feathers; done in some societies as punishment)

execute; put to death (kill as a means of socially sanctioned punishment)

pillory (punish by putting in a pillory)

castigate (inflict severe punishment on)

amerce (punish with an arbitrary penalty)

victimise; victimize (punish unjustly)

scourge (punish severely; excoriate)

correct; discipline; sort out (punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

penalization (the act of punishing)

 Context examples 

MPAM includes terms in the objective function to penalize the small between-group distances.

(Modified Partitioning Around Medoids, NCI Thesaurus)