What's the difference between penance and punish?

Penance


Definition:

  • (n.) Repentance.
  • (n.) Pain; sorrow; suffering.
  • (n.) A means of repairing a sin committed, and obtaining pardon for it, consisting partly in the performance of expiatory rites, partly in voluntary submission to a punishment corresponding to the transgression. Penance is the fourth of seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church.
  • (v. t.) To impose penance; to punish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Great Yuletide fun on ITV now: hilarious reparations as Dannii Minogue performs a selection of the biblical world's most hideous acts of penance in front of a panel of witheringly critical bisexual judges."
  • (2) The Vatican ordered O'Brien to undertake an unspecified period of "prayer and penance".
  • (3) The girls know they are expected to show a certain degree of penance.
  • (4) So next Sunday, he's going to murder blameless Father James as an enforced act of penance.
  • (5) On the contrary, I could name many ( many ) celebrities who I'd love to see forced into doing charity work and "giving back", as a penance for being smug, over-rewarded, self-obsessed wastes of space.
  • (6) In 2010, Admiral William McRaven, then the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, slaughtered a sheep in penance to a family that saw its members mistakenly killed by McRaven’s forces.
  • (7) The cardinal's resignation and removal from Scotland for six months of prayer and penance had cast doubt over an inquiry.
  • (8) But Harold Wilson, offended by a speech in which I had attacked the public schools, exiled me to the Foreign Office to do penance as minister of state.
  • (9) No longer obliged to play nice – as they did in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when they agreed to release €10.3bn in bailout money for Athens – they’d now be able to revive their demand that Greece live on ever more meagre rations in penance for its huge debts.
  • (10) The proposition also galvanized a generation of Latino politicians with long memories, who have effectively created a sanctuary state in California in subsequent years – offering driver’s licenses to folks without papers, providing in-state tuition for undocumented college students, officially telling la migra to butt out of state affairs – as penance for the sins of their predecessors.
  • (11) Though John’s midweek surgery leaves him sidelined for the season, Díaz has been working towards full fitness while Castillo has paid penance and was back in Pareja’s team for Sunday’s kickoff.
  • (12) The common understanding of prison is that it is a place of deprivation and penance rather than domestic comfort.
  • (13) Manchester United have got into the habit of treating their lopsided Premier League programme as a penance.
  • (14) But that old model is irreparably broken: the supermarket giant revealed last week that group pre-tax profits for the first six months of this year were almost completely wiped out by penance for past accounting sins and the collapsing profitability of the ailing UK chain.
  • (15) He paid the fines and, as a self-imposed additional penance, painted religious murals for various Baptist chapels around the city.
  • (16) Perhaps it was as a kind of penance that, under the Tories’ free schools programme, Hyman, now a qualified teacher, set up School 21 (a school for the 21st century, geddit?).
  • (17) O’Brien was Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric at the time, and he was ordered by the Vatican to spend a period of time in “prayer and penance”.
  • (18) Given all this, it's not surprising that ICT came to be regarded by schools as an onerous obligation and by children as a tiresome penance inflicted on them by adults who seemed to have no idea about the online world.
  • (19) Now perhaps these same people have accepted the austerity measures largely because they see them as a form of penance; this is even the language that their politicians have couched their policies in to sell them.
  • (20) Having already ticked off the home secretary and the education secretary for conducting their private feud in public, he sent the bulk of Eric Pickles to separate them on the front bench as they did their two-hour penance on the naughty step answering urgent questions in the Commons on extremism in schools.

Punish


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To impose a penalty upon; to afflict with pain, loss, or suffering for a crime or fault, either with or without a view to the offender's amendment; to cause to suffer in retribution; to chasten; as, to punish traitors with death; a father punishes his child for willful disobedience.
  • (v. t.) To inflict a penalty for (an offense) upon the offender; to repay, as a fault, crime, etc., with pain or loss; as, to punish murder or treason with death.
  • (v. t.) To injure, as by beating; to pommel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Maybe the world economy goes tits up again, only this time we punish the rich instead of the poor.
  • (2) It’s not to punish the public, it’s to save the NHS and its people.” Another commenter added: “Of course they should strike.
  • (3) Alan Pardew faces punishment from the Football Association for his head-butt on Hull City's David Meyler.
  • (4) Anwar, who was not Sanam's father, admitted to police after his arrest that he put the girl in the cupboard as punishment and said Navsarka punished her in the same way.
  • (5) He could be the target of more punishing wit, as when Michael Foot, noting a tendency to be tougher abroad than at home, called him "a belligerent Bertie Wooster without even a Jeeves to restrain him."
  • (6) In many countries, male same-sex relationships are punishable by 10 years behind bars; in at least two, the penalty is death.
  • (7) There is a mutual interest in keeping prosperity that exists and has built over the years.” But Pisani-Ferry said Macron would certainly not seek to punish Britain.
  • (8) "We have Revolutionary Guards who defied orders, though they were severely punished, expelled from the force and taken to prison," he says.
  • (9) Initial acceleration of the DRL responding appeared to be due to adventitious punishment of collateral behavior which was observed between the bar-presses.
  • (10) As the last two people executed in Britain, the macabre anniversary of their deaths at Strangeways prison in Manchester and Walton prison in Liverpool is generating more publicity than their crime and punishment ever did at the time.
  • (11) These cases fall into two categories: situations where offspring are provided with opportunities to practice skills ("opportunity teaching"), and instances where the behavior of young is either encouraged or punished by adults ("coaching").
  • (12) That led to the second breakthrough, as the once formidable laws of omerta - silence punishable by death - cracked.
  • (13) What punishment will Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain face?
  • (14) When we reached our summit, or whatever spot was deemed by my father to be of adequately punishing distance from the car to deserve lunch, Dad would invariably find he had forgotten his Swiss army knife (looking back, I begin to doubt he ever had one) and instead would cut cheese into slices with the edge of his credit card.
  • (15) If America can decide the punishment for Osama, why can't we decide that?"
  • (16) There is also the issue of fair sentencing – if a person has a violent fight in a bar and is sentenced to an IPP with a two year tariff, and then finds himself stuck in the system six years later he has received a punishment three times more severe than the crime he committed in the eyes of the court.
  • (17) We are determined to make sure governors have every power at their disposal to detect supply, punish those found using or dealing, and enforce a zero-tolerance approach.
  • (18) They ended up exceeding that margin comfortably, surging to a 14-0 lead inside the first 19 minutes and then withstanding the inevitable Samoan fightback, with the Wigan wing Pat Richards kicking four penalties to punish their growing indiscipline.
  • (19) Many Halifax and Bank of Scotland current account customers face a huge hike in overdraft charges, which will particularly punish those who regularly go into the red by a small amount, it emerged this week .
  • (20) Albion rarely threatened, though Tim Howard was alert to Shane Long's first-time shot, but had several chances to punish Everton on the counterattack late on.