retaliation
Other forms: retaliations
Retaliation is an act of revenge. Before you initiate retaliation on someone who has wronged you, consider whether he or she might have a ninja alter ego and a set of nunchucks stashed away.
The noun retaliation stems from the Latin retaliare, meaning “pay back in kind.” Notice the word kind in that definition. Retaliation used to have both good and evil connotations. Now, though, it’s important to read that kind as synonymous with type or sort because retaliation has since lost its positive sense. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
-
action taken in return for an injury or offensetypes:payback, retribution, vengeancethe act of taking revenge (harming someone in retaliation for something harmful that they have done) especially in the next lifereprisala retaliatory action against an enemy in wartimetype of:
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing retaliation
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury imagines a dystopian future in which firemen burn banned books and people are constantly bombarded with mindless entertainment. This classic novel is as powerful and relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1953.
This scathing dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials is also an allegory of Senator Joseph McCarthy's pursuit of Communists in the 1950s.
In this best-selling novel, sixteen-year-old Starr's life is turned upside down when she witnesses the death of her friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.