(v. t.) To return the like for; to repay or requite by an act of the same kind; to return evil for (evil). [Now seldom used except in a bad sense.]
(v. i.) To return like for like; specifically, to return evil for evil; as, to retaliate upon an enemy.
Example Sentences:
(1) Jordanian officials are aware of possible retaliation from an increasingly cornered Damascus, which this week accused Amman of "playing with fire" by opening its border to a military push.
(2) Tehran might also decide to retaliate by stepping up military support for Houthi Shia rebels in Yemen, who are fighting a Saudi-led alliance.
(3) In 2004, the dispute settlement body , the "judicial branch" of the WTO, ruled that the US had to reform its cotton subsidies or face "retaliation" from Brazil.
(4) Iran has vowed to retaliate against the ISA extension, passed unanimously on Thursday, saying it violated last year’s agreement with six major powers to curb its nuclear programme in return for lifting of international financial sanctions.
(5) There is all sorts of opacity which makes it easy for an employee to suffer retaliation.” Despite recent reforms to improve transparency and accountability, the organisation remains impervious to public scrutiny, with no established mechanism for freedom of information – a right which more than 100 governments around the world have enshrined in law, and is openly advocated by UN bodies such as Unesco.
(6) It would be foolish to bet that Saudi Arabia will exist in its current form a generation from now.” Memories of how the Saudis and Opec deliberately triggered an economic crisis in the west in retaliation for US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war still rankle.
(7) Chief executive Louis Gallois said Beijing's refusal to allow Hong Kong Airlines to complete a $4bn order for the A380 super-jumbos amounted to "retaliation measures" over the policy, which came into force at the beginning of the year.
(8) The group repeatedly struck at Turkish cities in 2016 in retaliation for Ankara’s support for international efforts to suppress its activities in Syria and Iraq.
(9) Britain's high commissioner described him as "becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism" – and was expelled in retaliation .
(10) The Syrian military, overstretched by the civil war, has not retaliated, and it was not clear whether the embattled Syrian leader would choose to take action this time.
(11) Obama warned Moscow before the election to stop meddling, but reports have since emerged that he decided against retaliating after the CIA warned him Putin was behind it.
(12) The chances of retaliation against the eurozone by the Kremlin over the coming months are high.
(13) The top priority should be ensuring that women who report sexual abuse to not suffer retaliation by government security forces.
(14) Last month, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that the extension would be viewed in Tehran as a breach of the nuclear accord and threatened retaliation.
(15) US hawks, such as senator Lindsey Graham, had suggested a boycott in retaliation for allowing Snowden to remain in the country.
(16) Officials in Amman concede it heightens a risk of retaliation from its increasingly cornered neighbour.
(17) The recent arrest of the brother, Liu Hui, may be particular retaliation for two incidents that broke the security cordon around Liu Xia and her isolation in her fifth-floor apartment in central Beijing.
(18) "I was afraid they might retaliate," she said, saying she feared for herself and her family after looking up secret service on the internet and seeing that some agents were sharpshooters.
(19) Even one destroyed life – and a 20-year sentence for a 39-year old filmmaker surely means the cruellest of all individual punishments – will lead to an even greater punishment and retaliation that may befall on the whole country.
(20) The UK was the first to respond with punitive measures, cutting all ties to the Iranian banking system and parliament, the Majlis, which retaliated on Sunday by calling for the expulsion of Britain's ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, and the permanent downgrading of bilateral relations.
Vengeful
Definition:
(a.) Vindictive; retributive; revengeful.
Example Sentences:
(1) On hearing the Rolf Harris verdicts, I felt vengeful, like many, I expect – condemning this man who led the public a merry dance and enjoyed enormous success while perpetrating abuse.
(2) If he was a cartoon character, he’d be … Mourinho was definitely the Grinch – ill-tempered, vengeful, unable to moderate what came out of his mouth, but also sometimes charming and hilariously funny.
(3) Thankfully, there is no sign so far of another Oswald Mosley, and the British National party performed poorly in the election, but Gray detects some of the hallmarks of populism – "a diffuse sense of grievance directed at the political class" and "an indeterminate, unlimited hope" – in the 2008 election of the unqualified Boris Johnson as mayor of London, in the carelessly vengeful mood of many voters after the MPs' expenses scandal, and in the three-week wonder of Cleggmania.
(4) Whatever else Valérie Trierweiler has been portrayed as – vengeful harpy, ambitious meddler, undignified ex – she is also a woman who has had her heart broken.
(5) Individuals "associated with the opposition" had used an FM radio station to broadcast hate speech, even urging "men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community", it said.
(6) Either he says "mea culpa" and resigns, almost certainly precipitating a general election; or he condemns the ledgers as fabrications, the work of a vengeful Bárcenas angry about taking the fall for a practice that allegedly all were party to.
(7) After much online rancour, Pelevina agreed she would not stand in the elections, but wrote on Facebook that Yashin was a “simple liar, petty and vengeful, and simply an indecent person”.
(8) Hopefully it takes more than a throwing knife hurled by a vengeful sexagenarian to take him down.
(9) Labour strategists also hope that by postponing the bulk of the pain until April 2010 or the year after, the voters will not be too vengeful in the spring.
(10) Perhaps the culprit was skiving off the wedding of a despised but vengeful cousin when he posted.
(11) What’s much more questionable is the way the same vengeful attitude is extended to anyone who ever portrayed the last two years of Labour politics in terms of doubt, concern and malaise, and who are being similarly instructed to say sorry for their alleged heresy or be escorted from the building.
(12) Acts of intimacy and frail hope in a vortex out there, of mad politics and distant wars come vengefully home to claim those who had simply gone about their lives.
(13) Fast forward 10 years and a vengeful ghost of the victim returns to haunt the Iceland manager, who has, rather unusually, become the county's prime minister.
(14) The Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia, argued that the attack “will generate more anger and we will have more vengeful actions from the regime, which already did not waste any time in the past [in terms of increasing] oppression and fighting freedoms in the name of counter-terrorism”.
(15) "Instead of chasing tax evaders they are chasing me," said Vaxevanis, who had described his original trial as "targeted and vengeful".
(16) The vengeful allies after the First World War tried initially to demand Germany pay reparations on that scale, atoning for millions of dead in the trenches, before more than halving their demands.
(17) One woman looked her in the eye and described how she lost her sons, aged 12 and nine, when they were unlawfully killed by her vengeful ex-husband in a house fire in which he also died.
(18) For the last few months, in preparation for a radio documentary, I've been talking to Comfort's friends and relations and reading through the immense body of work that now lies in the shadow of The Joy of Sex – the poetry that ensured he was spoken of in the same breath as Auden and Spender; the drama about the mine-workers forced to dig a toxic element that irradiates their bones and turns them into vengeful monsters; the pamphlets arguing that peace in the atomic age can only be secured through public disobedience.
(19) Trierweiler was seen as a vengeful second wife, staking out her territory.
(20) That it is impossible to imagine her successors going in for comparable sharing only underlines, on the other hand, how rapidly the royal family restored its factory settings – absorbing, along the way, the woman who prompted Diana into vengeful activity.