violence

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)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 night”

   “A "passenger/goods" cock is provided in each cab, by which, when placed in the "goods" position, the normal proportional brake application is slowed down. 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.”

2. (countable, uncountable)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!”

   “One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks on schools[…]as children, teachers or school buildings become the targets of attacks. Parents fear sending their children to school. Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.”

3. (countable, uncountable)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.”

4. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)Injustice, wrong.

   “The translation does violence to the original novel.”

   “Racism, classism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and heterosexism are also wicked problems of structural violence […]”

verb

1. (nonstandard)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 ...”

   “And the triad is made complete by she who is violenced by him.”

   “He physically violenced my mother, physically violenced me and my brothers, and was sexually abusive to me until I was in second grade.”