1. penal(a = adj.pert) - of or relating to punishment; "penal reform"; "penal code"
2. penal(s = adj.all) - serving as or designed to impose punishment; "penal servitude"
3. penal(s = adj.all) punishable - subject to punishment by law; "a penal offense"
Of or pertaining to punishment, to penalties, or to crimes and offenses; pertaining to criminal jurisprudence Milton. [1913 Webster]
penal, adj.
1 a of or concerning punishment or its infliction (penal laws; a penal sentence; a penal colony). b (of an offence) punishable, esp. by law.
2 extremely severe (penal taxation).
Idiom:
penal servitude hist. imprisonment with compulsory labour.
Derivative:
penally adv.
Etymology:
ME f. OF penal or L poenalis f. poena PAIN
N punishment, punition, chastisement, chastening, correction, castigation, discipline, infliction, trial, judgment, penalty, retribution, thunderbolt, Nemesis, requital, penology, retributive justice, lash, scaffold, imprisonment, transportation, banishment, expulsion, exile, involuntary exile, ostracism, penal servitude, hard labor, galleys, beating, flagellation, fustigation, gantlet, strappado, estrapade, bastinado, argumentum baculinum, stick law, rap on the knuckles, box on the ear, blow, stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel, slap, slap in the face, wipe, douse, coup de grace, torture, rack, picket, picketing, dragonnade, capital punishment, execution, lethal injection, the gas chamber, hanging, electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines, decapitation, decollation, garrotte, garrotto, crucifixion, impalement, firing squad, martyrdom, auto-da-fe, noyade, happy dispatch, hara-kiri, seppuku, drinking the hemlock, punishing, penal, punitory, punitive, inflictive, castigatory, punished, Int, a la lanterne!, culpan paena premit comes, eating the bitter bread of banishment, gravis ira regum est semper, sera tamen tacitis paena venit pedibus, suo sibi gladio hunc jugulo.