sentence

Sentence means a ruling of punishment made by a judge in a court case.

(noun)

An example of sentence is twenty years in prison after a murder conviction.

To sentence is defined as to give someone a punishment.

(verb)

An example of sentence is a judge ordering a criminal to serve two years in jail.

Sentence is defined as a statement or question made with group of words including a subject, verb and object.

(noun)

An example of sentence is a group of words in a book that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.

See sentence in Webster's New World College Dictionary

noun

1. a decision or judgment, as of a court; esp., the determination by a court of the punishment of a convicted person
2. the punishment itself
Gram. a word or a group of syntactically related words that states, asks, commands, or exclaims something; conventional unit of connected speech or writing, usually containing a subject and a predicate: in writing, a sentence begins with a capital letter and concludes with an end mark (period, question mark, etc.), and in speech a sentence begins following a silence and concludes with any of various final pitches and a terminal juncture
Archaic a short moral saying; maxim
Music period

Origin: OFr < L sententia, way of thinking, opinion, sentiment, prob. for sentientia < sentiens, prp. of sentire, to feel, sense

to pronounce judgment or punishment upon (a convicted person); condemn (to a specified punishment)

Related Forms:

See sentence in American Heritage Dictionary 4

noun

A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.
Law
a. A court judgment, especially a judicial decision of the punishment to be inflicted on one adjudged guilty.
b. The penalty meted out.
Archaic A maxim.
Obsolete An opinion, especially one given formally after deliberation.