penance

English

Wikipedia

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA: /ˈpɛn.əns/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

penance (plural penances)

1. A voluntary self-imposed punishment for a sinful act or wrongdoing. It may be intended to serve as reparation for the act.
2. A sacrament in some Christian churches.

Quotations

• 2009: Stuart Heritage, Hecklerspray, Friday the 22^nd of May in 2009 at 1 o’clock p.m., “Jon & Kate Latest: People You Don’t Know Do Crap You Don’t Care About”

  You know all this kerfuffle about Jordan and Peter Andre, and how you don’t know if they’re really splitting up or it’s just an act, and how you can’t be bothered to find out because wasting even a fraction of your brainpower on those bright orange clueless dicksplats would make you just as bad as them and you’d feel duty-bound to fling yourself under an industrial threshing machine as penance? You do? Good.

Related terms

• penitent

Translations

voluntary self-imposed punishment

• Catalan: penitència (ca)
• Dutch: boetedoening
• French: pénitence (fr)
• German: Buße (de) f
• Hungarian: vezeklés (hu)
• Italian: penitenza (it)
• Norwegian: bot (no)

• Polish: pokuta (pl) f
• Portuguese: penitência (pt) f
• Russian: искупление (ru) (iskuplenije) n
• Scottish Gaelic: peanas (gd) m
• Serbo-Croatian: pokora (sh)
• Spanish: penitencia (es)

sacrament in some churches

• Dutch: berouw (nl),penitentie (nl)
• French: pénitence (fr) f

• German: Bußsakrament (de) n

Verb

penance (third-person singular simple present penances, present participle penancing, simple past and past participle penanced)

1. To impose penance; to punish.
   • Keats

     Some penanced lady elf.