Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To do something in response to an action done to oneself or an associate, especially to attack or injure someone as a response to a hurtful action.
- intransitive verb To pay back (an injury) in kind.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To return in kind; repay or requite by an act of the same kind: now seldom or never used except in the sense of returning evil for evil: as, to
retaliate injuries. - To return like for like; especially (now usually), to return evil for evil.
- Synonyms See
revenge , n.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To return like for like; specifically, to return evil for evil.
- transitive verb To return the like for; to repay or requite by an act of the same kind; to return evil for (evil). [Now seldom used except in a bad sense.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To do something
harmful ornegative to getrevenge for some harm; tofight back or respondin kind to an injury oraffront .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb take revenge for a perceived wrong
- verb make a counterattack and return like for like, especially evil for evil
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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However, attempting to retaliate is either futile or dangerous ethically due to c.
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If one person defects, harming the environment and thus the interests of others, then a common way for fellow players to retaliate is to defect as well.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Dorian Warren " Boeing is Wrong, the NLRB Is Right ," Letters, May 11 use a definition of "retaliate" that my dictionary doesn't have.
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If you look into how baseball works, it looked like ... maybe he thought the way to retaliate is to throw and protect his guys.
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If the French shoot themselves in the foot, there is no reason for us to "retaliate" by shooting ourselves in the foot.
Trade War?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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North Korea has told a visiting American politician that it would allow international inspectors to visit a newly unveiled uranium-enrichment facility and announced Monday that it would not "retaliate" against South Korea for conducting military exercises - gestures that seemed intended to calm tensions on the Korean Peninsula, at least for the time being.
North Korea makes some gestures toward calm John Pomfret 2010
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North Korea has told a visiting American politician that it would allow international inspectors to visit a newly unveiled uranium-enrichment facility and announced Monday that it would not "retaliate" against South Korea for conducting military exercises - gestures that seemed intended to calm tensions on the Korean Peninsula, at least for the time being.
North Korea makes some gestures toward calm John Pomfret 2010
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Now we're into a subtlety of the baseball code: Did Morgan "retaliate" by stealing the bases?
Men behaving badly 2010
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In a speech introducing his formal trade strategy Tuesday, Mr. De Gucht said the EU would use its leverage as the world ' s largest economic bloc to " retaliate " against countries with closed public-contracts markets.
EU Seeks to Crack Bidding In Beijing John W. Miller 2010
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Hillary said she would "retaliate" (after finding out who was responsible) and got great accolades.
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