rebel
Americannoun
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rebels
plural
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a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of their country.
- Synonyms:
- insurgent, traitor, mutineer, insurrectionist
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a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition.
verb (used without object)
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rebels,
present (3rd person singular)
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rebelled,
past participle, past
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rebel,
past participle, past
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rebelling
present participle
verb
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to resist or rise up against a government or other authority, esp by force of arms
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to dissent from an accepted moral code or convention of behaviour, dress, etc
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to show repugnance (towards)
noun
-
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a person who rebels
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( as modifier )
a rebel soldier
a rebel leader
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-
a person who dissents from some accepted moral code or convention of behaviour, dress, etc
Usage
What does rebel mean? A rebel is a person who resists or defies rules or norms or rises up against the powers that be. In its more serious sense, a rebel is a revolutionary trying to overthrow a government. More generally, it means someone who breaks the rules, resists authority, or otherwise challenges the status quo by doing things in a nontraditional way, such as in fashion and other arts. As a noun, rebel is pronounced "REB-uhl."Rebel is also a verb meaning to resist or rise up against authority or tradition. As a verb, rebel is pronounced "ri-BELL."Example: Danielle refused to wear her uniform to school, fighting with the principle and urging the other girls to rebel against the policy as she did.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
rebelsimple
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rebelssimple
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have rebelperfect
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have rebelledperfect
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has rebelperfect
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has rebelledperfect
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am rebellingprogressive
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are rebellingprogressive
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is rebellingprogressive
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have been rebellingperfect progressive
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has been rebellingperfect progressive
Past
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rebelsimple
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rebelledsimple
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had rebelperfect
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had rebelledperfect
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was rebellingprogressive
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were rebellingprogressive
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had been rebellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of rebel
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English adjective rebel(e), from Old French rebelle, from Latin rebellis “renewing a war,” equivalent to re- re- + bell(um) “war” + -is adjective suffix; Middle English verb rebelle(n), from Old French rebeller and Latin rebellāre; noun derivative of the adjective
Explanation
When you rebel against your parents by dyeing your hair green and staying out without calling, you are acting in a way that questions both their authority and their rules about what is right and acceptable. A rebel is someone who fights authority. The story of a rebel often finds its way into books and movies. In the 1950s film "Rebel without a Cause," a teenager rebels against his parents. In the "Star Wars" movies, the Jedi rebel against the Empire. A rebel, whether the cause they are fighting for is just or not, is always the underdog. One pronunciation hint, rebel as a noun has the stress on the first syllable and as a verb on the second.
Vocabulary lists containing rebel
"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act I
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Fighting Words: Belli and Milit
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The American Revolution - Introductory
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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.
See Examples For:
Meanwhile, the M23 rebel group that controls parts of the east of DR Congo has announced new restrictions on movement between government-held and rebel-held areas of North Kivu province.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Maj Gen Adel Issa, 67, is accused of a raft of crimes allegedly committed during the Syrian civil war, which ended in December 2024 when rebel forces took the capital, Damascus, and Assad fled.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Mr. Sharaa, the victorious rebel commander, now complies with the IAEA.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
Players are starting to mildly rebel: announcing they want fewer events, and more money at the events they do play, but it hasn’t manifested in any significant change.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
His name has stood through all the centuries, from Greek days to our own, as that of the great rebel against injustice and the authority of power.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
The move highlights the complexity of tackling Ebola amid ongoing hostilities between the Congolese government and the rebels.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed initially sought rapprochement with Eritrea when he came to power, and the two governments cooperated against the Tigrayan rebels in the 2020-2022 conflict.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
In his apartment, days after Assad's fall, we watched the rebels looking for clues as to where he might have gone.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
“We root for the rebels in ‘Star Wars’ and want them to defeat Darth Vader, or we side with the Fremen in ‘Dune.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
There were few engagements with the enemy at that time—the rebels, we suspected, had little powder and less spirit—so the most numerous deaths were from distempers and disorders.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Unlike the majority of his generational cohort, he never rebelled against the establishment that promoted it.
From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2026
One of the main reasons colonists rebelled against the crown was that they wanted more Indigenous land—they wanted to move farther west into North America, but the king was telling them no.
From Slate ● Jul. 3, 2026
Paraguay’s national anthem starts by stating that the people of the Americas were “oppressed for three centuries” until they rebelled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
Haiti became the first independent black nation in the Americas in 1804, after enslaved people rebelled against their French masters in what was then the colony of Saint-Domingue.
From Barron's ● May 28, 2026
Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago!
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
Speakers promoting AI are getting booed at universities, voters are rebelling against data centers, and even AI-friendly Trump administration officials are starting to retreat as an artificial intelligence backlash gathers pace across the United States.
From Barron's ● May 19, 2026
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Kennedy that, as a political compromise, to keep the Joint Chiefs of Staff from rebelling, he needed 1,000.
From Slate ● Feb. 3, 2026
Artists, musicians, writers, film makers and performers of all kinds are rebelling, one of the most profound forms of resistance to a repressive regime.
From Salon ● Jan. 1, 2026
Four MPs who were suspended from the Labour Party after rebelling against welfare reforms have had their whips restored.
From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2025
Lily used honey these days, rebelling against a product pretending to be maple syrup without a speck of the real thing in it.
From "It All Comes Down to This" by Karen English
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.
