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n law, it relates only to crimes, and signifies a law which retroacts, by way of criminal punishment, upon that which was not a crime before its passage, or which raises the grade of an offense, or renders an act punishable in a more severe manner that it was when committed. Ex post facto laws are held to be contrary t…

or of palliating; diminishing, or lessening; palliation, as of a crime; mitigation, as of punishment. To listen . . . to every extenuation of what is evil. I. Taylor.

Mildness or mitigation of punishment; lenity. I could not discover the lenity and fabor of this sentence. Swift.

-- To tar and feather a person, to smear him with tar and cover him with feathers, as a punishment or an indignity.

rfeiture either lands or goods, or both, at the common law, and to which capital or other punishment may be added, according to the degree of guilt.

A flat piece of wood, used for striking, children, esp. on the hand, in punishment.

terminating a matter in dispute; especially, a payment of money imposed upon a party as a punishment for an offense; a mulct.

in dry substances, when broken. Bacon. But I have reasons strong and forcible. Shak. That punishment which hath been sometimes forcible to bridle sin. Hooker. He is at once elegant and sublime, forcible and ornamented. Lowth (Transl. )

who, having committed a crime in one jurisdiction, flees or escapes into another to avoid punishment.

A place or time of punishment, affiction, or great trial; severe experience or discipline. Deut. iv. 20. Bustamente furnace, a shaft furnace for roasting quicksilver ores. -- Furnace bridge, Same as Bridge wall. See Bridge, n., 5. -- Furnace cadmiam or cadmia, the oxide of zinc which accumulates in the chimneys of fu…

A punishment by beating with a stick or club; cudgeling. This satire, composed of actual fustigation. Motley.

from type while on a galley; a galley proof. Galley slave, a person condemned, often as a punishment for crime, to work at the oar on board a galley. "To toil like a galley slave." Macaulay.-- Galley slice (Print.), a sliding false bottom to a large galley. Knight.

from a high place upon sharp stakes or hooks, as the Turks dropped malefactors, by way of punishment. Ganching, which is to let fall from on high upon hooks, and there to hang until they die. Sandys.

A military punishment formerly in use, wherein the offender was made to run between two files of men facing one another, who struck him as he passed. To run the gantlet, to suffer the punishment of the gantlet; hence, to go through the ordeal of severe criticism or controversy, or ill-treatment at many hands. Winthrop…

ightened by a screw until life become extinct; also, the instrument by means of which the punishment is inflicted.

vide into regular steps, grades, or intervals, as the scale of a thermometer, a scheme of punishment or rewards, etc.

The criminality and consequent exposure to punishment resulting from willful disobedience of law, or from morally wrong action; teh state of one who has broken a moral or political law; crime; criminality; offense against right. Satan had not answer, but stood struck With guilt of his own sin. Milton.…

exposed to penalty; -- used with of, and usually followed by the crime, sometimes by the punishment. They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Matt. xxvi. 66. Nor he, nor you, were guilty of the strife. Dryden.

am. [Prov. Eng. or Irish] Gunner's daughter, the gun to which men or boys were lashed for punishment. [Sailor's slang] W. C. Russell.

To put to death by suspending by the neck; -- a form of capital punishment; as, to hang a murderer.