violence
Syllables: vio·lence/ˈvaɪ(ə)lən(t)s/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
obsolete/ˈvaɪ.(ə)ˌlɛns/
violence noun: extreme force.
Noun
violence (countable and uncountable, plural violences)
- Extreme force.
- The violence of the storm, fortunately, was more awesome than destructive.
- Some others get a rotten wheele, all worne and cast aside,
Which covered round about with strawe, and tow, they closely hide:
And caryed to some mountaines top, being all with fire light,
They hurle it down with violence, when darke appeares the night1570, Thomas Naogeorgus, translated by Barnabe Googe, The Popish Kingdome
- Physical action which causes destruction, harm, pain, or suffering.
- We try to avoid violence in resolving conflicts.
- There is nothing unique or magical about the Middle East; it shares xenophobias and violences with all the rest of the world!2003, Diana Abu-Jaber, Arabian Jazz, page 329
- Widespread fighting.
- Violence between the government and the rebels continues.
- But by the early 2000s, we were seeing fewer games like DOOM that dealt in the fantasia of ultraviolence and more games that tried to replicate the everyday violence of military encounters.2021 October 29, Trevor Strunk, “How To Get Away With Making An Ultraviolent Video Game”, in Defector
- A perceived injustice, especially in the context of social justice.
- The translation does violence to the original novel.
- Racism, classism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and heterosexism are also wicked problems of structural violence […]2017, Kevin J. O'Brien, The Violence of Climate Change
Verb
violence (third-person singular simple present violences, present participle violencing, simple past and past participle violenced)
- To subject to violence.
- The key general point is that the idea of the agendered, asexual, aviolenced worker is a fiction; workers and organizational members do not exist in social abstraction; they are gendered, sexualed and violenced, partly by their position ...1996, Professor Cathy Nutbrown, Respectful Educators - Capable Learners: Children's Rights and Early Education, SAGE, →ISBN, page 36
- And the triad is made complete by she who is violenced by him.2011, Timothy D. Forsyth, The Alien, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 24
violence meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
violence in Hindi
- extreme force
- हिंसा hinsā
- action intended to cause destruction, pain or suffering
- हिंसा hinsā
- widespread fighting
- हिंसा hinsā
- injustice, wrong
- हिंसा hinsā
violence in Tamil
- extreme force
- வன்முறை vaṉmuṟai
- action intended to cause destruction, pain or suffering
- வன்முறை vaṉmuṟai
violence in Marathi
- action intended to cause destruction, pain or suffering
- हिंसा hiusā
- widespread fighting
- हिंसा hiusā
violence in Urdu
- extreme force
- تَشَدُّد taśaddud, ہِنْسا hinsā
- action intended to cause destruction, pain or suffering
- تَشَدُّد taśaddud, خُشُونَت xuśūnat, ہِنْسا hinsā
- widespread fighting
- ہِنْسا hinsā
More languagesFewer languages
- violence in Bengali
- হিংস্রতা hiṅsrota, হিংসা hiṅśa
- violence in Telugu
- హింస hiṁsa
- violence in Malayalam
- അക്രമം akramaṁ
- violence in Kannada
- ಹಿಂಸೆ hiṃse
- violence in Punjabi
- ਹਿੰਸਾ hinsā
- violence in Gujarati
- હિંસા
- violence in Odia
- ହିଂସା hiṁsā
- violence in Sanskrit
- हिंसा hiṃsā, रभस् rabhas, त्विष् tviṣ
- violence in Sinhala
- ප්රචණ්ඩත්වය pracaṇḍatwaya
- violence in Assamese
- হিংসা hiṅxa
- violence in Nepali
- हिंसा, हिंसाको
- violence in Pashto
- خشونت xušonat, تشدد tašadód
- violence in Tagalog
- karahasan, dahas
- violence in Arabic
- عُنْف ʕunf, عَنْف ʕanf
- violence in Malay
- keganasan
- violence in Indonesian
- kekerasan
- violence in Thai
- ความรุนแรง kwaam-run-rɛɛng
- violence in Vietnamese
- bạo lực
- violence in Myanmar
- အကြမ်းဖက်မှု a.kram:hpakhmu.
Examples of violence in a sentence
- Thus Water also, or any other Liquor, included in a convenient vessel, by being warmed, manifestly expands it self with a very great violence:[…]1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia:
- This is for use when hauling an unbraked or partially braked train, and prevents the unbraked stock from running into the locomotive or braked portion of the train with violence.1958 September, “Swindon's First Main-Line Diesel Locomotive”, in Railway Magazine, page 603:
- Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.2013 July 19, Mark Tran, “Denied an education by war”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 1:
- He physically violenced my mother, physically violenced me and my brothers, and was sexually abusive to me until I was in second grade.2012, Megan Sweeney, The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 46:
Antonyms of violence
Forms of violence
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | violences |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | violences |
| present participle | violencing |
| past participle | violenced |
| past | violenced |
Origin of violence
Inherited from Middle English violence, borrowed from Old French violence, borrowed from Latin violentia, from violēns /violentus (“violent”) + -ia. See violent. Displaced native Old English stræc.
Words formed from violence
- antiviolence
- choose violence
- counterviolence
- cyberviolence
- do violence to
- hyperviolence
- I choose violence
- intimate partner violence
- male pattern violence
- male-pattern violence
- narcoviolence
- non-violence
- police violence
- pornoviolence
- powerviolence
- proviolence
- self-violence
- sexual violence
- silence is violence
- spiritual violence
- superviolence
- ultraviolence
- violence-ridden
Phrases with violence
Questions about violence
- What does violence mean?
- Violence means extreme force.
- What is violence in Hindi?
- Violence in Hindi is हिंसा (hinsā). See Violence meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use violence in a sentence?
- Thus Water also, or any other Liquor, included in a convenient vessel, by being warmed, manifestly expands it self with a very great violence:[…]
- What part of speech is violence?
- Violence can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce violence?
- Violence is pronounced /ˈvaɪ(ə)lən(t)s/.
- What is the plural of violence?
- The plural of violence is violences.
Words near violence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: violence (page history and authors); violence (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); হিংসা (Assamese) (page history and authors); violence (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-violence.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-violence.wav.
Cite this entry: “violence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/violence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.