Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Making or bringing retribution or requital; paying back; conferring reward or punishment according to desert; retaliative.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of or pertaining to retribution; of the nature of retribution; involving retribution or repayment
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Relating to
retribution ;retaliatory .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective given or inflicted in requital according to merits or deserts
- adjective of or relating to or having the nature of retribution
Etymologies
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Examples
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Now, that is what I call retributive justice; for she threw down the chair for him to stumble over, and, if he has grazed his knees, she suffers under a torn dress, and must retire until one of the maids darn up the rent.
Christmas: Its Origin and Associations Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries William Francis Dawson
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If Israel simply protects itself without lashing out in retributive violence, they may eventually gain a Palestinian negotiating partner amenable to peace and capable of enforcing it among its own people.
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She thought she saw clearly, that their unnatural bereavement was a blow dealt in retributive justice; but she found it not in her heart to exult or rejoice over them.
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828 Olive Truth Gilbert 1850
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But if you want to treat Israel as just another nation-state engaged in retributive ethnic cleansing, that’s just fine, as long as you’re honest about it.
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Penal justice (sometimes referred to as retributive justice), for example, concerns the punishment of offenders for their legal and/or moral offences, and is to be distinguished from distributive justice.
Social Institutions Miller, Seumas 2007
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Such is the notion of retributive justice in the Highlands.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume I. Mrs. Thomson
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The jurist, therefore, in a matter of criminal adjudication, entirely loses sight of the personal conditions of the accused, and the social conditions of the community, and confines his attention to the deed, and to the maxims of a so-called retributive justice.
Criminal Sociology 1899
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The sentiment expressed in the penult couplet is not uncommon, the idea of retributive justice, of others performing the last offices for the clerk who had so often done the like for his neighbours.
The Parish Clerk 1892
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Although Lewis notes that some people object to the idea of retributive punishment, retribution is the only thing that makes sure that punishment is just.
dangerous idea 2009
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Link killing,life imprisonment and all other kind of retributive justices are just what they are,punishments.
Guantánamo Hearing for 9/11 Suspects - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 2008
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