Etimology
From Middle English violence, from Old French violence, from Latin violentia, from adjective violentus, see violent. Displaced native Old English stræc.
noun
violence (countable and uncountable, plural violences)
Extreme force.
Physical action which causes destruction, harm, pain, or suffering.
Widespread fighting.
(figuratively) Injustice, wrong.
Examples
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
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.
Violence between the government and the rebels continues.
The translation does violence to the original novel.
Racism, classism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and heterosexism are also wicked problems of structural violence […]
Related words
antonyms
(antonym(s) of "action intended to cause destruction, pain or suffering"): peace, nonviolence
hypernyms
(extreme force): force
related terms
violent
violate
violation
verb
violence (third-person singular simple present violences, present participle violencing, simple past and past participle violenced)
(nonstandard) To subject to violence.
Examples
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.