Webster's English Dictionary

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sentence

1. sen.tence \'sent-*n(t)s, -*nz\ \sen-'ten-ch*l\ \-ch*-le-\ n [ME, fr. OF, 
   fr. L sententia, lit. feeling, opinion, fr. (assumed) sen] often attrib 
   tent-, sentens, irreg. prp. of sentire to feel - more at SENSE obs  1: 
   OPINION; esp : a conclusion given on request or reached af ter deliberation 
   2a: JUDGMENT; specif : one formally pronounced by a court or  judge in a 
   criminal proceeding and specifying the punishment to be inflicted upon the 
   convict 2b: the punishment so imposed  3: AXIOM, MAXIM  4: a grammatically 
   self-contained speech unit consisting of a word or a syn tactically related 
   group of words that expresses an assertion, a question, a command, a wish, 
   or an exclamation, that in writing usu. begins with a capital letter and 
   concludes with appropriate end punctuation, and that in speaking is 
   phonetically distinguished by various patterns of stress, pitch, and pauses 
   5: PERIOD  6: a meaningful logical formula : PROPOSITION  - sen.ten.tial aj
2. sentence vt 1: to pronounce sentence on  2: to condemn to a specified 
   punishment  3: to cause to suffer something