violence Hear it!

violence Definition

vio·lence (vī′ə ləns)

noun

  1. physical force used so as to injure, damage, or destroy; extreme roughness of action
  2. intense, often devastatingly or explosively powerful force or energy, as of a hurricane or volcano
    1. unjust or callous use of force or power, as in violating another's rights, sensibilities, etc.
    2. the harm done by this
  4. great force or strength of feeling, conduct, or expression; vehemence; fury
  5. a twisting or wrenching of a sense, phrase, etc., so as to distort the original or true sense or form to do violence to a text
  6. an instance of violence; violent act or deed

Etymology: ME < MFr < L violentia < violentus: see violent

violence Synonyms

violence

n.

  1. Violent disturbance

    rampage, tumult, disorder, clash, onslaught, struggle, destruction; see also confusion 1, disturbance 2, uproar.

  2. Violent conduct

    fury, force, vehemence, injury, frenzy, brutality, savagery; see also intensity 1.

violence Law Definition

n

The use of physical force, especially physical force utilized with malice and/or the attempt to harm someone. Some courts have ruled that in labor disputes, violence includes picketing with false information on the placards, in an attempt to harm a business.
violence Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • incite: Earlier this week the Qatar-based TV and internet news channel was accused of inciting violence and hatred and taken off the air.
  • flee: Groups include families with children and, since 2002, people who are fleeing domestic violence as well as those leaving care or prison.
  • escalate: This will further aggravate tension and escalate violence in the region.
  • condemn: The only thing that used to unite Unionism for many years was the opportunity to condemn IRA violence.
  • condone: At the end of the day, it doesn't mean i'm gonna condone violence or start on a killing spree.

Preposition: against

  • shopworkers: One survey published in February revealed a 350 per cent rise in the number of threats of violence against shopworkers in Scotland last year.
  • woman: Bristol has launched a new research group focused on violence against women.
  • civilian: The reason for that was due to the gift being from the royalties of his book in which he justified targeted violence against civilians.

Adjective modifier

  • domestic: Domestic violence affects 1 in 4 women at some point in their adult lives.
  • sectarian: On ther same day some 40 people died through sectarian violence, now sweeping Iraq on a daily basis.
  • sexual: Sexual Violence The BBFC has a strict policy on rape and sexual violence.
  • racial: Our vision We believe that domestic violence and racial violence are fundamental human rights issues.
  • gender-based: Although reproductive health issues are importantly included, clearer guidelines are needed especially on the management of sexual and gender-based violence.
  • alcohol-related: A bill will be introduced to give police and local communities new powers to tackle knives, guns and alcohol-related violence.

Noun used with modifier

  • mob: Coming up: child labor, sexual harassment, drugs, road safety, abortion and mob violence.
  • loyalist: Kelly used the NIO figures to rubbish PSNI boss Hugh Orde's claims that republican and loyalist violence was a the same level.
  • IRA: The whole picture changed when the IRA violence was taken out of the equation.
  • gang: Residents of the city's Chinatown district are living in fear from the growing gang violence.
  • separatist: Separatist violence is rampant in Aceh and rising in two other key provinces.
violence Quotes

He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

—Bible (Old Testament)

A society†which is riven by a dozen oppositions along lines running in every direction, mayactually be in less danger of being torn with violence or falling to pieces than one split along just one line. For each new cleavage contributes to narrow the cross clefts, so that one might say that society is sewn together by its internal conflicts.

—Ross, Edward Alsworth

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred†[nor] allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence.

—King, Martin LutherJr

Force is the same throughout and the whole is in every part of it. Force is a spiritual power, an invisible energy which isimparted by violence from without toall bodies out of their natural balance.

—Leonardo daVinci

He [John Hampden] knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.

—1st Baron

Who can I tear to pieces, if not my friends?† If they were not my friends, I could not do such violence to them.

—Bacon, Francis

   Antes que me hubiera apasionado por mujer alguna, jugue¤   mi corazo¤ n  al azar y me lo gano¤   la violencia. Before I felt passion for any woman, I gambled my heart and lost it to violence.

—Rivera,Jose¤   Eustasio

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

—Walker, Alice Malsenior

   In violence, we forget who we are.

—McCarthy,Joseph R(aymond)

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

—Malcolm X originally Malcolm Little

  Keep violence in the mind Where it belongs.

—Aldiss, BrianWilson

It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence

—Wilbur, Richard

Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well.

—White, Edmund

We donot deridethe fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

—Jordan,June

Though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place of Christendom.

—Elizabeth I

   Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting†there are quite enough realcauses oftroublealready, and weneed not add to them by encouraging young men to kickeach other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.

—Bennett, Alan

Body-line was not an incident, it was not an accident, it was not a temporary aberration. It was the violence and ferocity of our age expressing itself in cricket.

—James, C(yril) L(ionel) R(obert)

Violence in real life is terrible; violence in movies can be cool. It's just another colour to work with.

—Tarantino, Quentin

The best thing about the violence in Northern Ireland is that it's all so ancient and honorable† The Irish are in the same terrific position as the Shiites in Lebanon, the peasants in El Salvador, the blacks in America, the Jews in Palestine, the Palestinians in Israel (and everybody everywhere, if you read your history)öenough barbarism has been visited on the Irish to excuse all barbarities by the Irish barbarians.

—O'Rourke, P(atrick) J(ake)

Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity† Violence is a crime against humanity, for it destroysthevery fabric of society.On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence.

—PopeJohn Paul II originally Karol Jozef Wojtyla

Violence is fun, man.

—Tarantino, Quentin

Where words prevail not, violence prevails; But gold doth more than either of them both.

—Kyd,Thomas