Other forms: penalties
In sport, a penalty is the free kick or point awarded when a player breaks the rules. Award a penalty, score from the penalty, a penalty shootout.
In football a penalty is taken from twelve yards with only the goalkeeper defending, and a penalty shootout decides drawn knockout matches. Rugby, hockey and water polo all have their own versions. Outside sport, a penalty is a punishment or a charge: a penalty clause, a penalty fare, the death penalty. Note penalise, and pay the penalty, meaning to suffer the consequences of something.
1nounpenaltyA free kick or point awarded when a player breaks the rules.
“The penalty was given in the last minute and missed.”
2nounpunishmentA punishment or charge for breaking a rule.
“There is a penalty for paying late and nobody reads it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
penalty is a punishment or award.
Latin poena means punishment or a fine — the same root as pain, penal and punish. Greek poine before it meant blood money, the payment made to a family for a killing, which is where the whole idea of a penalty begins.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷey-
Middle French
pénalité
English, today
penalty
Borrowed from Middle French pénalité. From Middle French pénalité, from pénal, from Latin poenālis, from poena, borrowing of Ancient Greek ποινή, from Proto-Hellenic kʷoinā́, from Proto-Indo-European kʷoynéh₂, comprising kʷey- + -nós.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA