adjective [usuallybeforenoun]
1 connected with or used for punishment, especially by law:
penal laws / reforms * the penal system * Criminals could at one time be sentenced to penal servitude (= prison with hard physical work). * a penal colony (= a place where criminals were sent as a punishment in the past)
2 that can be punished by law:
a penal offence
3 very severe:
penal rates of interest
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for penal is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does penal appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — penal appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.