Intolerable Acts

Cultural  

1. Also known as the Coercive Acts; a series of British measures passed in 1774 and designed to punish the Massachusetts colonists for the Boston Tea Party. For example, one of the laws closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the tea that they had destroyed. Although the acts were intended to check colonial opposition to Britain, they only inflamed it.

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Example Sentences

It took violence, punitive taxes, the Intolerable Acts and more to spur Americans to take the extraordinary step of breaking with Britain.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026

Delegates likened the Intolerable Acts to “being degraded into a state of servitude” and expressed their grievances because “silence would be disloyalty.”

From National Geographic • Jul. 3, 2023

Colonists had a nickname for these new laws: the Intolerable Acts.

From National Geographic • Jul. 3, 2023

He fought the Intolerable Acts on local committees, and then rose to the Governor’s Council and the Continental Congress, all before turning 30.

From Textbooks • Jan. 18, 2018

The outraged New Englanders, led by Timothy Pickering and others, began to use again, in town-meetings and legislatures, the old-time language of 1774, once employed against the Five Intolerable Acts, and to threaten secession.

From The Wars Between England and America by Smith, T. C.