in Law, the penalty which a person incurs on the commission of a crime. See the article CRIME and Punishment.

The ingenuity of men has been much exerted to torment each other; but the following are the punishments that have been usually adopted in the different countries of the world. The capital punishments have been beheading, crucifixion, burning, roasting, drowning, scalping, hanging by the neck, the arm, or the leg, starving, sawing, exposing to wild beasts, rending asunder by horses drawing opposite ways, burying alive, shooting, blowing from the mouth of a cannon, compulsory deprivation of sleep, rolling in a barrel stuck with nails pointed inwards, poisoning, pressing slowly to death by a weight laid on the breast, casting headlong from a rock, tearing out the bowels, pulling to pieces with red-hot pincers, the rack, the wheel, impaling, flaying alive, &c. &c.

The punishments short of death have been fine, pilory, imprisonment, compulsory labour at the mines, galley, PURNING. See PUN.