noun
Historical or formal term for capital punishment, often implying punishment for a crime. Rare in modern everyday language; more commonly expressed as 死刑.
古い法律では、重罪に対して誅が科されることがあった。
Under old laws, the death penalty could be imposed for serious crimes.
死刑 is the standard modern term for the death penalty. 誅 is an archaic or literary equivalent, rarely used in contemporary Japanese.
The kanji 誅 originally meant 'to punish' or 'to execute' in classical Chinese. The Japanese reading ちゅう is derived from the historical Chinese pronunciation. The exact historical derivation of the word's usage in Japanese is uncertain; it appears mainly in older texts.