VIOLENCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Violence

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/vˈaɪələns/ Listen

noun

Violence n.

The quality or state of being violent; highly excited action, whether physical or moral; vehemence; impetuosity; force. "That seal You ask with such a violence, the king, Mine and your master, with his own hand gave me." "All the elements At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn With the violence of this conflict."

Injury done to that which is entitled to respect, reverence, or observance; profanation; infringement; unjust force; outrage; assault. "Do violence to do man." "We can not, without offering violence to all records, divine and human, deny an universal deluge." "Looking down, he saw The whole earth filled with violence."

Ravishment; rape; constupration.

To do violence on, to attack; to murder. "She... did violence on herself."

To do violence to, to outrage; to injure; as, he does violence to his own opinions.

Synonyms: Vehemence; outrage; fierceness; eagerness; violation; infraction; infringement; transgression; oppression.

verb

Violence v. t. To assault; to injure; also, to bring by violence; to compel. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Violence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Violence" Quotes from Famous Books

... up as free women in the attire of matrons and maids, and in this guise they went forth from the city, scoffed and jeered at all whom they met, and engaged among themselves in a fight, striking and throwing stones at each other. Another Roman king who perished by violence was Tatius, the Sabine colleague of Romulus. It is said that he was at Lavinium offering a public sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men, to whom he had given umbrage, despatched him with the sacrificial knives and spits which they had snatched from the altar. The occasion and the manner ...

— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... new discoveries, which shall be given you, and shall not transgress them one jot or tittle in regard both to what is pacified during your term, and to conserving that, as well as what shall have been pacified before; for in both cases you must do this without any sort of violence or ill treatment, but with the kind treatment by which friends must be preserved. Thus if there has been any excess in this—which has been done contrary to my will and orders—it must entirely cease in whatever ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... away from the loot so that you could grab it yourself—thus shockingly had the man misinterpreted Sam's motives—was another thing altogether, and his stout soul would have none of it. He began immediately to struggle with all the violence at his disposal. His large, hairy hands came out of the water and swung hopefully in the direction where he assumed his assailant's ...

— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... suffices to impel the Jacobins onward, and, for a long time, their clear-sighted men, among them Sieyes, their thinker and oracle, have told them that "if they make peace they are lost."[51115]—To exercise their violence within they require peril without; lacking the pretext of public safety they cannot prolong their usurpation, their dictatorship, their despotism, their inquisition, their proscriptions, their exactions. Suppose that peace is effected, will it be possible for the government, ...

— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... them that the directory, urged by the necessity of defending the republic from the conspirators among them, had assigned the Odeon and the School of Medicine for the place of their sittings. The greater part of the deputies present exclaimed against military violence and the dictatorial usurpation, but they were obliged ...

— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

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