Word of the Day

: September 23, 2021

chastise

verb chass-TYZE

What It Means

Chastise means "to criticize (someone) harshly for doing something wrong."

// The boss eventually had to chastise certain employees for being consistently late.

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chastise in Context

"I used to chastise people for not working as efficiently as the WWE. … I was judgmental and I was apprehensive and I wanted to be back in the ring because I loved that immediate gratification." — John Cena, quoted in USA Today, 5 Aug. 2021

Did You Know?

There are many words to express the infliction of a penalty in return for wrongdoing—for example, chastise, castigate, chasten, correct, discipline, and punish. Of these, chastise, chasten, and castigate share similar origins as well as similar meanings. Chastise developed as an altered form of chasten, which comes from the Anglo-French chastier, which has its roots in the Latin verb castigare, which also gave English the word castigate.