Word.ws English Dictionary

sit-in

sit-in noun: a peaceful form of protest in which people occupy an area and refuse to leave.

sit-in: a peaceful form of protest in which people occupy an area and refuse to leave
Image: 笨笨的小B, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sit-in (plural sit-ins)

  1. A peaceful form of protest in which people occupy an area and refuse to leave.
    • Thousands of students marched in the streets and staged a sit-in at T’ien-an-men Square, chanting “Long live democracy! Long live freedom! Down with corruption!”2000, Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, “The Violent Crackdown at T’ien-an-men Square”, in The Rise of Modern China, 6th edition, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 928
    • Local sources said a sit-in protest by hundreds of ethnic Hui Muslims took place on Friday to defend the huge new mosque, which was built last year in the northern region of Ningxia.2018 August 10, “Chinese Hui Muslims protest mosque demolition in Weizhou”, in Deutsche Welle, archived from the original on 10 Aug 2018, Asia
    Synonyms:
    sit-down, dharna

Adjective

sit-in (not comparable)

  1. Designed to be sat in.
    • a sit-in kayak
    • a sit-in bath

sit-in meaning in Arabic, Persian and Vietnamese

sit-in in Arabic

type of protest
اِعْتِصَام iʕtiṣām

sit-in in Persian

type of protest
تحصن tahasson

sit-in in Vietnamese

type of protest
toạ kháng

Synonyms of sit-in

Forms of sit-in

pluralsit-ins

Origin of sit-in

A deverbal from sit in. By surface analysis, sit + -in (protest).

Questions about sit-in

What does sit-in mean?
Sit-in means a peaceful form of protest in which people occupy an area and refuse to leave.
What is sit-in in Arabic?
Sit-in in Arabic is اِعْتِصَام (iʕtiṣām). See Sit-in meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is sit-in?
Sit-in can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of sit-in?
The plural of sit-in is sit-ins.

Words near sit-in in the dictionary

  1. sit-down
  2. sit-down money
  3. sit-downer
  4. sit-downers
  5. sit-downs
  6. sit-in
  7. sit-inner
  8. sit-inners
  9. sit-ins
  10. sit-lie
  11. sit-on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sit-in (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sit-in.wav.

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