adjective [usuallybeforenoun] (formal)
1 intended as punishment:
There are calls for more punitive measures against people who drink and drive. * (AmE) He was awarded punitive damages (= in a court of law). * Punitive action will be taken against the hooligans.
2 very severe and that people find very difficult to pay:
punitive taxes
punitively adverb
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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 punitive is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does punitive appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — punitive 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.
