Punishment, a penalty inflicted on a person for a crime or offense, by the authority to which the offender is subject; a penalty imposed in the enforcement or application of law. The punishments usual for criminal offenses in the United States are death by hanging or electricity, or by shooting, imprisonment with and without hard labor, solitary confinement, detention in a reformatory school, subjection to police supervision, imposition of fines, and putting under recognizance. In New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts, the death penalty is inflicted by electrocution, and in Delaware whipping is resorted to as a punishment for certain offenses.


Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.