Emily Dickinson Lexicon

sentence (-s), n. [Fr. < L. 'feel, have an opinion'.] (webplay: death, doom, imprisonment, pause, pronounced, verb, word).

1. Structure; construction; language sequence; [fig.] line; branch; shoot; leaf.
2. Penalty; conviction under the law; prescribed punishment, given by one in authority.
3. Main clause statement; independent syntactic unit; message comprised of a subject and a predicate; [Webster 1844] “a number of words containing complete sense or a sentiment followed by a full pause.”
4. Set of words; [metonymy] text; discourse; writing.