What's the difference between punish and skirmish?

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.

Skirmish


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To fight slightly or in small parties; to engage in a skirmish or skirmishes; to act as skirmishers.
  • (v. i.) A slight fight in war; a light or desultory combat between detachments from armies, or between detached and small bodies of troops.
  • (v. i.) A slight contest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This we can see writ large in the prime minister’s skirmishes with Philip Hammond , the only member of government visibly considering the national interest.
  • (2) Manouras added: We will only know once the coroner has conducted an autopsy, but what I can say is that there were no police or skirmishes at the spot at which he died.
  • (3) But decades of struggle and skirmishes with neighbours have resulted in a tightly guarded border, and they were soon captured by men in uniform.
  • (4) On Wembley Way the party atmosphere had been briefly punctuated by a skirmish between rival fans.
  • (5) Benghazi's special forces, who declared support for Haftar, have skirmished with the militias he is targeting but the general himself has not yet been inside the city.
  • (6) But the confrontation quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes as the two sides played a deadly cat and mouse game in the centre of the city.
  • (7) On the face of it, this was little more than a skirmish in a town on Mali's north-east confines.
  • (8) For the UN negotiators in Qatar, this year's talks are just the skirmishes before the key date of 2015, when a new global agreement must be achieved.
  • (9) But Panorama's North Korea film, due to be broadcast on Monday, presents a challenge of a different order to the skirmish earlier last week about playing a song on the charts that could be taken as disrespectful to Lady Thatcher.
  • (10) No, I see it as being the right opportunity at the right time,” says a man desperate to break Wearside’s perennial relegation skirmishes.
  • (11) That interpretation was then corroborated by Labour MPs, who either hadn’t read the document or saw it as a handy weapon in skirmishes for control of the party’s election message.
  • (12) 4.08pm: Below the line, baerchen is upbeat : "Having watched England's superstar striker give the ball away umpty-nine times against Man City last night with some of the clumsiest touches seen since my brief skirmish with a girl from Hackenthorpe in 1971, they might as well give the job to Charles Chimp for all the difference it will make.
  • (13) It is the latest skirmish in the bitter infighting that has befallen Ukip since the election in which the party won 4 million votes but just one parliamentary seat.
  • (14) While the skirmish between Chris Christie and Paul over terrorism and its prevention via surveillance got a lot of media attention this week , it's more helpful to look at the general trend among potential candidates.
  • (15) Police fired volleys of tear gas canisters into a crowd of thousands - people in office clothes as well as youths in masks who had fought skirmishes throughout the day - scattering them into side streets and nearby hotels.
  • (16) When TV cameras start filming skirmishes in the crowd, Trump argues their focus on the protesters is evidence of liberal media bias.
  • (17) This rapidly escalating skirmish in American culture wars came after the Department of Justice sued North Carolina for a state law that forced people to only use public bathrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates.
  • (18) In Tripoli, fighters from the GNC’s militia force, Libya Dawn , have turned on each other in several nights of skirmishing, even as pro-Tobruk forces battle Libya Dawn for control of the coastal highway west of the city.
  • (19) Skirmishes have flared outside Iraqi’s second largest city over the last few days with an airstrike on one of its main bridges on Sunday.
  • (20) It's the first battle cry in the pair's hair-raising physical and mental skirmish and has become something approaching a catchphrase.