a. (UN-1 7 b.)
1531. Dial. on Laws Eng., II. 4 b. He is vnpunysshable of waste by the lawe.
1584. R. Scot, Discov. Witchcr., III. viii. (1886), 40. An impossible purpose is unpunishable.
1648. Fairfax, etc., Remonstr., 49. While your own proceedings admit themselves unpunishable.
1682. Evats, trans. Grotius (title-p.), In the Third [Book] is declared, What in War is Lawful, that is Unpunishable.
a. 1700. Dryden, trans. Ovid’s Art of Love, 38. Th’ unpunishable Pleasures of the Kind.
a. 1797. H. Walpole, Geo. II. (1847), I. ii. 334. It is the cause of sovereigns that their crimes should be unpunishable.
1802–12. Bentham, Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827), I. 354. Mendacity … remains altogether unpunishable.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. V. i. Inertia alone is at once unpunishable and unconquerable.
Hence Unpunishably adv.
1649. Milton, Eikon., xxviii. 230. It were yet absurd to think that the Anointment of God should … give them privilege, who punish others, to sin themselves unpunishably.
1829. Bentham, Justice & Cod. Petit., 27. The now written, and above described unpunishably mendacious, pleadings.
