sentence
/ˈsɛnt(ə)ns
/noun
1A set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.Start sentences with subjects and verbs, and let other words branch off to the right....
- A slight lift in the voice at the end of a sentence changes statement to question.
- The key word in the last sentence is in quotation marks because, as Tolstoy made clear in War and Peace, there are as many truths about a given battle, after it, as there were participants in it.
1.1 Logic A series of signs or symbols expressing a proposition in an artificial or logical language.Logical inferences are then defined as relations between propositions or sentences, abstracting from the mental attitudes that go along with them....
- A second effect of Goodman's discussion was to undermine the orthodox assumption that confirmation is an exclusively logical relation between sentences.
- Since it does not succeed in expressing a proposition, the liar sentence is neither true nor false and the paradox is avoided.
2The punishment assigned to a defendant found guilty by a court, or fixed by law for a particular offence: her husband is serving a three-year sentence for fraud slander of an official carried an eight-year prison sentence he was under sentence of death...
- He had also received separate suspended jail sentences for fraud offences.
- Once the prison sentence imposed by the court has been served, one cannot say that the sentencing court had it in mind that the offender should be detained unless it was shown that he was no longer a danger.
- Some US states, such as Hawaii, have far more lenient laws than Texas in such cases and would allow treatment rather than a prison sentence or death penalty.
Synonyms
judgement, ruling, pronouncement, decision, determination, decree;
verdict;
punishment
prison term, prison sentence, jail sentence, penal sentence;
life sentence, suspended sentence
informal time, stretch, stint
British informal porridge
North American informal rap
rhyming slang bird
verb [with object]
Declare the punishment decided for (an offender): ten army officers were sentenced to life imprisonment...
- Second, the judge must have already decided to sentence the offender to a prison term of less than two years duration.
- The learned judge had just decided he hadn't used the right phrases when sentencing the last defendant.
- Having been found guilty, all three were each sentenced yesterday to one year imprisonment.
Synonyms
pass judgement on, impose a sentence on, pronounce sentence on, mete out punishment to, punish, convict;
condemn, doom
Origin
Middle English (in the senses 'way of thinking, opinion', 'court's declaration of punishment', and 'gist (of a piece of writing')): via Old French from Latin sententia 'opinion', from sentire 'feel, be of the opinion'.
Rhymes
- Rockefeller, John D.
- Rockefeller, Nelson Aldrich
- Rockefeller Republican
- rock elm
- Rock English
- rocker
- rocker arm
- rocker-bottom
- rocker cam
- rockered
- rocker foot
- rockeried
- rockerless
- rocker panel
- rocker pump
- rocker shaft
- rocker sieve
- rocker switch
- rockery
- rocket
- rocket aeroplane
- rocket airplane
- rocket apparatus
- rocket astronomy
- rocket bird