How to use oppression in a sentence
40 example sentences · noun
Oppression means the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. Example: “Extreme freedom is followed by extreme oppression, said Plato.”
Examples of oppression by meaning
nounThe exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
- "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."2008, Nancy Pelosi, “A Voice That Will Be Heard”, in Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters, Doubleday, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC...
nounThe act of oppressing, or the state of being oppressed.
- Extreme freedom is followed by extreme oppression, said Plato.
nounA feeling of being oppressed. Special usage may include a sense of heaviness or obstruction in the body or mind...
- Our oppression was lifted by the reappearance of the sun.
- Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
More sentences with oppression
- After decades of inequality and oppression, the regime had lost legitimacy with its own population.From the entry legitimacy
- Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot’s oppression.From the entry enormity
- This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression neuters the press, Trump's critics and the Democratic Party.2024 July 14, Chris Hedges, “My Thoughts On the Attempted Trump Assassination”, in The Chris Hedges Report. From the entry neuter
- Another way Christians and Catholics are perceived as anti-homosexual is via institutional oppression.2022, Arthur David Canales, Pastoral Care to and Ministry with LGBTQ Youth and Young Adults, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, →ISBN, page 69. From the entry christian
- By becoming a male-to-female crossdresser, Chan-Hyo BAE gains insight into his identity under dual oppression.2018, Kim Hong-hee, “Chan-Hyo BAE: Living on the Borderlines”, in Chan[-]hyo Bae, Existing in Costume, Seoul, South Korea: Museum of…. From the entry visualize
- In the hands of the few power can be called oppression, repression, exploitation or authoritarianism.2011, Tim Gee, Counterpower, page 17. From the entry counterpower
- But go anywhere else in the Middle East and Zionism stands for theft, oppression, racist exclusionism.2009 January 25, Ethan Bronner, “The Bullets in My In-Box”, in New York Times. From the entry exclusionism
- Once oppression has been internalised, little force is needed to keep us submissive.2007, Brian Watermeyer, Disability and Social Change: A South African Agenda, HSRC Press, page 269. From the entry submissive
- But persistent sealore says that there was so much attention paid to oppression that good seamanship suffered.1998, Malcolm Archibald, Sixpence for the Wind: A Knot of Nautical Folklore - Page 128. From the entry sealore
- It is, rather, an indigenous Andean folk symbol of Spanish, and later criollo, colonialist oppression.1997, Milos Kokotovic, Confronting Postmodernism. From the entry pishtaco
- Note how the correction suppresses the tyrannophobe and immoderate expression 'tyrannical oppression' with the more neutral 'usurpation'.1996, David Hume, David Reid, David Hume of Godscroft's The History of the House of Douglas. From the entry tyrannophobe
- Like other contemporary Neorican authors, they are internationalizing their experiences of oppression and historical invisibility.1993, Frances R[ivera] Aparicio, “From Ethnicity to Multiculturalism: An Historical Overview of Puerto Rican Literature in the United…. From the entry Neorican
- It was no longer a question of butch vs. femme, liberations vs. oppression.1986 [1984], Armistead Maupin, Babycakes (Tales of the City), pages 64–65. From the entry femme
- This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics.1977, The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement" (better known as the Combahee River Collective Statement), in Zillah R.…. From the entry queenhood
- It's not my oppression, it's not your oppression but rather our oppression.1974 April 6, Sheri, “Women's Oppression and Separatism vs. Gay Liberation for All”, in Gay Community News, page 4. From the entry corner
- And as Lesbians, that neglect of women in humanstory has been our deepest oppression.1974 February 9, Judy Stein, “As Lesbians, As Women...”, in Gay Community News, volume 1, number 33, page 4. From the entry humanstory
- The line that runs through all of Chappelle's comedy is that anti-Blackness is the Final Boss of all oppressions.2021 October 14, Nicole Lewis, “Dave Chappelle Accomplished Exactly What He Wanted To”, in Slate, archived from the original on 22 Mar 2023. From the entry final boss
- Call it the oppression of the supermajority.2019 March 5, Tim Wu, “The Oppression of the Supermajority”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 14 Mar 2021. From the entry supermajority
- Undocuqueer immigrants ascribe meaning to their experiences by producing alternate subjectivities and subject positions that resist multiple axes of oppression.2018, Jesus Cisneros, “Working with the Complexity and Refusing to Simplify: Undocuqueer Meaning Making at the Intersection of LGBTQ and…. From the entry undocuqueer
- Rastaman don’t deal with negativity so oppression is now downpression even though there is no up in the word.2014, Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings, Oneworld Publications (2015), page 156. From the entry downpression
- Racism is one of several systems of oppression.2008, Donna M. Mertens et al., “Transformative Research and Ethics”, in Handbook of Social Research Ethics, page 95. From the entry able-bodiedism
- Already giving out under the heat or the sheer oppression of numbers, they guzzle mineral water like there were no tomorrow.1998, David M Thomas, chapter 6, in Anger’s Violin, Dingle, County Kerry: Mount Eagle Publications Ltd., →ISBN, page 114. From the entry like there were no tomorrow
- Softminded individuals among us feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it.1996, Richard W. Leeman, African-American Orators: A Bio-critical Sourcebook, →ISBN, page 218. From the entry softminded
- No one of us has a corner on oppression.1974 April 6, Sheri, “Women's Oppression and Separatism vs. Gay Liberation for All”, in Gay Community News, page 4. From the entry corner
- The good news is that Disney has tried to be even more thoughtful and nuanced with its oppression metaphors this time around.2025 November 25, Caroline Siede, “Zootopia 2 is a stagnant sequel with one stellar subplot”, in AV Club. From the entry nuanced
- Ghappar is Uighur, a Muslim minority group that has been the target of discrimination and oppression by Chinese officials in recent years.2020 August 7, Sophie Stuber, “Video of Uighur handcuffed to bed in quarantine centre refocuses attention on Chinese persecution”, in…. From the entry Foshan
- Delivered by the ‘Department of Art Liberation: Chonkiness Division’, each concise bullet point is another nail in the coffin of gender, oppression and prejudice.2020 September 8, Sophia McDonald, “Fringe 2020”, in Totally Dublin, Dublin, page 26. From the entry chonkiness
- The idea that the dominant lack the tools to recognize their role in systems of oppression is currently in the cultural ascendant.2017, Clare Chambers, “Ideology and Normativity”, in Aristotelian Society, →DOI. From the entry check your privilege
- In that context where cissexism and cissupremacy are the oppressions in question, a cisgender woman would not count as a marginalized person.2016, Nora Berenstain, “Epistemic Exploitation”, in Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, volume 3, number 22, page 570. From the entry cissexism
- He often spoke of his methods as political, that he was fighting racial oppression and countering the injustice of the Drug War.2015 October 1, “Survival Tactics and Strategies of Methamphetamine-Using HIV-Positive Men Who Have Sex with Men in San Diego”, in PLOS…. From the entry hypercognized
- Early on in his work, oppression is nothing an open window, a fast car, a willing female, or a tank of gas couldn't fix.2011, Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy: Darkness on the Edge of Truth, Open Court, →ISBN, page 197. From the entry crummy
- These other forms of privilege, and the oppression experienced by those who can't access them, mediate but never fully eradicate something like white privilege.2011 September 1, Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, Catapult, →ISBN. From the entry straight supremacy
- Within the framework of the ideology of antiquarianist (traditional) religion or culture, oppression is experienced sometimes as a problem, sometimes as a solution.1996, Digging Up Our Foremothers: Stories of Women in Africa, →ISBN, page 39. From the entry antiquarianist
- Let us not balance the books of oppression of the deaf on the backs and minds of other oppressed linguistic ethnic and cultural minorities.1992, Margaret Walworth with Donald F. Moores and Terrence J. O'Rourke, A Free Hand: Enfranchising the Education of Deaf Children, page 155. From the entry balance the books
- Further, the quintessence of Irishness could be found in the poor countrysiders who had been pushed beyond the pale by the forces of British oppression.1986, Jeffrey Prager, Building Democracy in Ireland, page 45. From the entry countrysider
- The realization of this joint oppression is like discovering that the stingy crusts of bread being held out by society have mold on them.1985 April 13, Charles Henry Fuller, “Learning to Draw my Name”, in Gay Community News, page 8. From the entry stingy
Meaning of oppression
- noun The exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
- noun The act of oppressing, or the state of being oppressed.
- noun A feeling of being oppressed. Special usage may include a sense of heaviness or obstruction in the body or mind; depression; dullness; lassitude.
Questions about oppression in a sentence
- How do you use oppression in a sentence?
- Oppression is used as a noun. For example: “Extreme freedom is followed by extreme oppression, said Plato.”
- What is a short sentence with oppression?
- “Call it the oppression of the supermajority.”
- What does oppression mean?
- Oppression means the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: oppression (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use oppression in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/oppression. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
