retaliation
Americannoun
-
retaliations
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of retaliation
Explanation
Retaliation is an act of revenge. Before you initiate retaliation on someone who has wronged you, consider whether he or she might have a ninja alter ego and a set of nunchucks stashed away. The noun retaliation stems from the Latin retaliare, meaning “pay back in kind.” Notice the word kind in that definition. Retaliation used to have both good and evil connotations. Now, though, it’s important to read that kind as synonymous with type or sort because retaliation has since lost its positive sense. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
Vocabulary lists containing retaliation
Fahrenheit 451
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The Crucible
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The Hate U Give
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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:
"Are we not closing it because we believe the Goethe Institutes in Russia would then be closed in retaliation?" he asked.
From Barron's ● Sep. 1, 2026
Between earlier military losses and fear of retaliation, Iran appears unwilling or unable to challenge the military status quo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 31, 2026
District Judge Rita F. Lin ruled the government acted in unlawful retaliation to Anthropic’s public pushback against Pentagon AI use.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
Flying Food Group said it “strongly disputes” allegations of retaliation and said that it promptly investigated the claims and ultimately terminated the supervisor involved.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
In retaliation, they stirred up as much trouble as possible among the readers.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
The moves follow a familiar pattern in U.S.-China negotiations of “limited escalations, symbolic retaliations, and carefully timed policy signals designed to probe the other side’s bottom line,” Gao said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2025
Experts say that the war-fighting plans in general go from warning shots to single strikes to multiple retaliations and that the hardest question is whether there are reliable ways to prevent a conflict from escalating.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 21, 2022
The agreement — which still needs to be finalized — comes after years of diplomatic tit-for-tat retaliations that have left the embassy badly understaffed, down from 1,200 personnel five years ago to just 120 now.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 3, 2021
Analysts warn Australia will probably face more economic retaliations from its biggest trading partner.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2021
The traitors were not made examples of, and negotiations and retaliations ceased.
From The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation Volume 1 by Charles Roger
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.
