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

These new laws, denounced in America as the Intolerable Acts, prompted widespread calls for a meeting of the colonies.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2016

Parliament heard of these events, it at once determined to punish Massachusetts, and in order to do this passed five laws which were so severe that the colonists called them the "Intolerable Acts."

From A School History of the United States by McMaster, John Bach