violence

Etymology

From Middle English violence, from Old French violence, from Latin violentia, from adjective violentus, see violent. Displaced native Old English stræc.

noun

1. Extreme force.
   The violence of the storm, fortunately, was more awesome than destructive.
2. Physical action which causes destruction, harm, pain, or suffering.
   We try to avoid violence in resolving conflicts.
   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. 2013-07-19, Mark Tran, “Denied an education by war”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 1
3. Widespread fighting.
   Violence between the government and the rebels continues.
4. (figurative) Injustice, wrong.
   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
5. (obsolete) ravishment; rape; violation

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 ... 1996, Professor Cathy Nutbrown, Respectful Educators - Capable Learners: Children's Rights and Early Education, SAGE, page 36
   And the triad is made complete by she who is violenced by him. 2011, Timothy D. Forsyth, The Alien, AuthorHouse, page 24
   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, page 46