as in retaliations
the act or an instance of responding to an injury with an injury
the neighborhood is being torn apart by an endless cycle of gang violence and retribution
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Recent Examples of retributions
What starts as a petty territorial conflict mutates into a spiralling cycle of retributions, escalating from passive-aggressive jabs to acts of destruction and ruin.
—
Udita Jhunjhunwala, Variety, 21 Nov. 2025
Surveys are important, too, so workers feel safe to speak up without any retributions.
—Vicki Salemi, Boston Herald, 27 Oct. 2025
Udita Jhunjhunwala, Variety, 21 Nov. 2025
Surveys are important, too, so workers feel safe to speak up without any retributions.
—Vicki Salemi, Boston Herald, 27 Oct. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for retributions
Noun
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Over the past year, countries rushed to secure piecemeal deals; some allowed panic to overtake them; very few coordinated their actions or retaliations.—
Mihir Sharma,
Twin Cities,
26 Mar. 2026
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Neither country can afford to return to the prior tariff rates during the heat of tit-for-tat retaliations, which freaked out Big Tech earlier this year.—
Ashley Belanger,
ArsTechnica,
15 Sep. 2025
Noun
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Maykol, a 25-year-old Havana resident who asked me to use just his first name to avoid regime reprisals, told me that lengthy power outages, already frequent before January, now occur daily.—
Gisela Salim-Peyer,
The Atlantic,
23 Apr. 2026
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Those two films are commonly described as meditations on the futility of violence in a world where justice takes the form of endless attacks and reprisals.—
Kelefa Sanneh,
New Yorker,
20 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Retributions.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/retributions. Accessed 27 Apr. 2026.
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