cast-

1. Any of the hereditary, endogamous social classes or subclasses of traditional Hindu society of India, stratified according to Hindu ritual purity, especially the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra castes.
2. A social class separated from others by distinctions of hereditary rank, profession, or wealth.
3. A social system or the principle of grading society based on castes.
4. The social position or status conferred by a system based on castes.
5. A specialized level in a colony of social insects; such as, ants, in which the members, including workers or soldiers, carry out a specific function.
6. Etymology: "a race of men", from Latin casto, "chaste" from castus, "pure, cut off, separated"; past participle of carere, "to be cut off from".

The application to Hindu social groups picked up in India in the 17th century from Portuguese casta, "breed, race, caste"; from an earlier casta raca "unmixed race", from the same Latin word.

1. To inflict severe punishment on in order to correct someone.
2. To criticize or to severely rebuke someone or someone's behavior.
3. Synonyms: chasten, chastise, objurgate, correct.
4. Etymology: from Latin castigatus past participle of castigare, "to purify, to chastise"; from castus, "pure" + agere, "to do". Used in the sense of "to make people pure by correcting or reproving them."

1. To subject to severe punishment, reproof, or criticism.
2. Verbal punishment or a severe scolding.
3. Etymology: from the Latin castigatio, or chastisement, via the French châtiment, is the infliction of severe moral or corporal punishment.

1. Pertaining to a castigator or to castigation; chastising, corrective, punitive.
2. An obsolete term for an instrument of chastisement.
3. A kind of chair formerly used for punishing scolds (those who are constantly finding fault), and also dishonest tradesmen, by fastening them in it, usually in front of their doors, to be pelted and hooted at by the mob, but sometimes to be taken to the water and ducked.

1. Morally pure in thought and/or conduct; decent and modest.
2. Not having experienced sexual intercourse; virginal.
3. Abstaining from unlawful sexual intercourse or abstaining from all sexual intercourse; a celibate.
4. Pure or simple, and unadorned in design or style; austere.