0 to make someone understand that they have failed or done something wrong and make them want to improve:
He was chastened by the defeat and determined to work harder.
1 to make someone aware of failure or of having done something wrong:
To begin, he identifies examples in which civil authorities chasten religious leaders.
By the 1840s, most had been chastened by experience despite optimistic speechifying and frequent modification.
He derided authority, mocking it, chastening it, and inviting us to laugh at our own reverence for it and for the author himself.
This reduced the justifiable use of ornament as embellishment, at least chastening its application.
The effect is chastening, if beyond desirable remedy.
It is a chastening reminder of just how school knowledge is circumscribed and censored to remain within certain unsaid but mutually understood boundaries.
It is certainly plausible that, in many instances, being the object of a ' sacrificial measure ' of kindness may be no less spiritually therapeutic than undergoing a chastening bout of suffering.
Arthur, after years of illness and exile, has returned, chastened and reduced.