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Imprisonment vs Penalty - What's the difference?

imprisonment | penalty |

As nouns the difference between imprisonment and penalty

is that imprisonment is a confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, as punishment for a crime while penalty is .

imprisonment

English

Alternative forms

* emprisonment (obsolete)

Noun

  • A confinement in a place, especially a prison or a jail, as punishment for a crime.
  • * Spenser
  • His sinews waxen weak and raw / Through long imprisonment and hard constraint.
  • * Blackstone
  • Every confinement of the person is an imprisonment , whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.
  • * (Sir Walter Raleigh)
  • Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments , tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these forenamed kings

    penalty

    Alternative forms

    * (archaic)

    Noun

    (penalties)
  • A legal sentence.
  • The penalty for his crime was to do hard labor.
  • A punishment for violating rules of procedure.
  • * 1900', , Chapter I,
  • Was it so irreconcilable, Warwick wondered, as still to peal out the curfew bell, which at nine o'clock at night had clamorously warned all negroes, slave or free, that it was unlawful for them to be abroad after that hour, under penalty of imprisonment or whipping?
  • (finance) A payment forfeited for an early withdrawal from an account or an investment.
  • (football) A direct free kick from the penalty spot, taken after a defensive foul in the penalty box; a penalty kick.
  • (ice hockey) A punishment for an infraction of the rules, often in the form of being removed from play for a specified amount of time.
  • A penalty was called when he tripped up his opponent.

    Derived terms

    * penalty arc * penalty box * penalty kick * penalty area * penalty phase * penalty shot * penalty shoot-out * penalty spot

    See also

    * free kick

    Anagrams

    * ----