The Collaborative International Dictionary
Penal \Pe"nal\, a. [L. poenalis, fr. poena punishment: cf. F. p['e]nal. See Pain.] Of or pertaining to punishment, to penalties, or to crimes and offenses; pertaining to criminal jurisprudence: as:
Enacting or threatening punishment; as, a penal statue; the penal code.
Incurring punishment; subject to a penalty; as, a penalact of offense.
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Inflicted as punishment; used as a means of punishment; as, a penal colony or settlement. ``Adamantine chains and penal fire.''
--Milton.Penal code (Law), a code of laws concerning crimes and offenses and their punishment.
Penal laws, Penal statutes (Law), laws prohibited certain acts, and imposing penalties for committing them.
Penal servitude, imprisonment with hard labor, in a prison, in lieu of transportation. [Great Brit.]
Penal suit, Penal action (Law), a suit for penalties.
Servitude \Serv"i*tude\, n. [L. servitudo: cf. F. servitude.]
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The state of voluntary or compulsory subjection to a master; the condition of being bound to service; the condition of a slave; slavery; bondage; hence, a state of slavish dependence.
You would have sold your king to slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude.
--Shak.A splendid servitude; . . . for he that rises up early, and goes to bed late, only to receive addresses, is really as much abridged in his freedom as he that waits to present one.
--South. -
Servants, collectively. [Obs.]
After him a cumbrous train Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude.
--Milton. -
(Law) A right whereby one thing is subject to another thing or person for use or convenience, contrary to the common right.
Note: The object of a servitude is either to suffer something to be done by another, or to omit to do something, with respect to a thing. The easements of the English correspond in some respects with the servitudes of the Roman law. Both terms are used by common law writers, and often indiscriminately. The former, however, rather indicates the right enjoyed, and the latter the burden imposed.
--Ayliffe. Erskine. E. Washburn.Penal servitude. See under Penal.
Personal servitude (Law), that which arises when the use of a thing is granted as a real right to a particular individual other than the proprietor.
Predial servitude (Law), that which one estate owes to another estate. When it related to lands, vineyards, gardens, or the like, it is called rural; when it related to houses and buildings, it is called urban.
Wikipedia
Penal Servitude'' (Russian:Katorga'') is a 1928 Soviet silent film directed by Yuli Raizman.
Usage examples of "penal servitude".
He said that he preferred to be hanged to lingering out his life in penal servitude, that he was grieved and repentant for his past life.
I saw her in the prisoners' dock, the Katusha betrayed by me, in a prisoner's cloak, condemned to penal servitude through a strange mistake, and my own fault.
It is valid, and it stipulates two years penal servitude, at the discretion of the plaintiff, together with two blows of the rat-whisk daily.
The schooner would be seized and the cargo confiscated, and he would get a long term of penal servitude.
But I must go back some years for that, and recall to your mind that extraordinary crime known in those days as the Baddock Will Case, which sent one of the most prominent and popular young men in Society to penal servitude--a life sentence, mind you, which was considered to be remarkably lenient by a number of people who thought that Captain de Mazareen ought to have been hanged.