pacification
Britishnoun
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Pacification is an attempt to create or maintain peace. That can mean appeasing a hostile country through diplomacy or even just by settling an argument. A pacifist is someone who is against fighting and wars. That can help you remember that pacification is a means — usually carried out by a government — to keep the peace or end a conflict. If two countries are having a war of words that could escalate, one country could use foreign aid (money) as a means of pacification. If a country is battling a revolution from within, stopping the insurgency can also be called pacification.
Vocabulary lists containing pacification
"Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell
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myPerspectives 10.3
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Excerpts from "Things Fall Apart"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As policing theorist Mark Neocleous has argued, pacification is the production of order by the very forces that create the danger they claim to manage.
From Slate ● Jul. 27, 2026
Speaking in Madrid, Sanchez says the deployment could happen "once we can see how to advance this task of pacification."
From Barron's ● Jan. 8, 2026
“We have to move forward little by little until we achieve the pacification of the entire country,” says Senator Salagado.
From BBC ● May 22, 2024
As American involvement in Vietnam deepened, he went to Saigon in 1965 to evaluate civilian pacification programs.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2023
Lieutenant Carroll said that we were going on another pacification mission the next day, then an hour later he came and told us that we weren’t.
From "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
