To chasten someone is to make them see that they were wrong, foolish, or too proud — not usually by hitting them, but by what happens next. A bad result, a quiet rebuke, a public miss: the person comes out smaller, more careful, a little ashamed. We often use it in the passive: he was chastened by the defeat; she felt chastened. It is a serious, slightly literary verb. It is milder and more about the heart than chastise, which can still sound like scolding or punishment, and much milder than old physical senses of punish. It comes from Old French chastier, “to punish,” from Latin castīgō, and it is a doublet of chastise and of castigate; it is also related to chaste, though today’s speakers do not hear “pure” in it. You chasten a person (or their pride), not a piece of metal.

使受教訓、挫其銳氣、讓人痛省