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

The representatives met in Philadelphia from September 5 through October 26, 1774, and at first they did not agree at all about the appropriate response to the Intolerable Acts.

From Textbooks • Dec. 30, 2014

Parliament sympathized with the Government, and in retaliation passed four laws of such severity that the colonists nicknamed them the "Intolerable Acts."

From The Leading Facts of English History by Montgomery, D. H. (David Henry)