impunity
noun
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Impunity, like the words pain, penal, and punish, traces to the Latin noun poena, meaning "punishment." Poena, in turn, came from the Greek poinē, meaning "payment" or "penalty." Impunity has been around since the 1500s; in 1660, Englishman Roger Coke wrote "This unlimited power of doing anything with impunity, will only beget a confidence in kings of doing what they [desire]." While royals may act with impunity more easily than others, the word impunity can be applied to beings great and small. Take, for example, this 2023 quote from the Sidmouth Herald in England: "The [yew tree] fruits are readily eaten by birds but they do not digest the seeds as they are poisonous. Only one bird, the rare and shy Hawfinch, is able to eat the seeds with impunity."
Examples of impunity in a Sentence
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab, Forbes.com, 7 Sep. 2025
Secaucus is not going to be the place where these criminals operate with impunity!
—Julia Bonavita, FOXNews.com, 4 Sep. 2025
Brazil’s violent past has yet to be fully reckoned with, but this trial marks a historic departure from impunity, said Lucas Figueiredo, the author of several books about the country’s most recent dictatorship.
—CNN Money, 2 Sep. 2025
And a lot of it has to do with the failure of journalism and the lack of adversarial journalism that’s asking hard questions — one of the things of the themes of this film is kind of cycles of impunity.
—Lily Ford, HollywoodReporter, 29 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for impunity
Cite this Entry
“Impunity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impunity. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
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impunity
noun
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