revolt 1 of 2

as in insurrection
open fighting against authority (as one's own government) soon the revolt had spread to every corner of the country

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

revolt

2 of 2

verb

Synonym Chooser

How does the noun revolt differ from other similar words?

Some common synonyms of revolt are insurrection, mutiny, rebellion, revolution, and uprising. While all these words mean "an outbreak against authority," revolt and insurrection imply an armed uprising that quickly fails or succeeds.

a revolt by the Young Turks that surprised party leaders
an insurrection of oppressed laborers

When is it sensible to use mutiny instead of revolt?

The meanings of mutiny and revolt largely overlap; however, mutiny applies to group insubordination or insurrection especially against naval authority.

a mutiny led by the ship's cook

When could rebellion be used to replace revolt?

While in some cases nearly identical to revolt, rebellion implies an open formidable resistance that is often unsuccessful.

open rebellion against the officers

When can revolution be used instead of revolt?

Although the words revolution and revolt have much in common, revolution applies to a successful rebellion resulting in a major change (as in government).

a political revolution that toppled the monarchy

When might uprising be a better fit than revolt?

The synonyms uprising and revolt are sometimes interchangeable, but uprising implies a brief, limited, and often immediately ineffective rebellion.

quickly put down the uprising

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of revolt
Noun
Then around the time the revolt begins, the intertitles disappear. Ritesh Mehta, IndieWire, 5 Sep. 2025 Five days later, after a revolt, he was reinstated. Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 4 Sep. 2025
Verb
There will likely be a tipping point where the historic matchgoing fan is either priced out or just revolted out of wanting to attend. Matt Slater, New York Times, 14 Aug. 2025 But in a twist, some users revolted, irritated by OpenAI's decision to retire older models, including the apparently much-beloved GPT-4o. PC Magazine, 11 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for revolt
Recent Examples of Synonyms for revolt
Noun
  • Five people died and 140 police officers were injured before the insurrection was quelled.
    Chris Boyette, CNN Money, 14 Sep. 2025
  • At a time when contentious words dominate our conversations—think insurrection and fascism and fake news and woke—the need for dictionaries to chronicle and explain language, and serve as its watchdog, has never been greater.
    Stefan Fatsis, The Atlantic, 13 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • Locals were disgusted with city leadership’s inept handling of the crisis.
    Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 16 Aug. 2025
  • The woman was disgusted by the comments and left the room, according to the outlets, citing the records.
    Liam Quinn, People.com, 8 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • Redford rebelled against his father’s cautiousness and indeed against all expectations, even after the family moved to the more upscale Van Nuys.
    Stephen Galloway, HollywoodReporter, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Ali—or Richard Durham channeling Ali—would write just months after the fight that some part of him had always rebelled against the primal allure of his sport.
    Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic, 16 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • In Budapest, after the uprising against the Communist regime, Andor — raised by his mother with idealized tales of his dead father — has his world turned upside down when a brutish man appears, claiming to be his true father.
    Lily Ford, HollywoodReporter, 12 Sep. 2025
  • While Fonseca frames the uprising as a type of emergent phenomenon in his post and a YouTube video, examination of the source code by AI researcher Simon Willison shows that Fonseca specifically instructed the villagers to behave this way and even escalate the unrest over time.
    ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 12 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • Like Einstein, Brassard feels repulsed by the way the particles in the Bell experiment seem to have firsthand awareness of each other despite being separated by, in principle, light-years of space.
    Quanta Magazine, Quanta Magazine, 8 Aug. 2025
  • This is something that finally repulses Ivor, and that Orla also grapples with.
    Deborah Treisman, New Yorker, 27 July 2025
Noun
  • Vance is fresh off a stay in the English countryside, where the staff of popular pub The Bull in Charlbury allegedly threatened a mutiny if they were forced to serve the staunch conservative.
    Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News, 15 Aug. 2025
  • So no red eyes, no space mutinies — just words, structured to be helpful.
    Chris Reed, Oc Register, 30 July 2025
Verb
  • In late August, contaminated oysters sickened several people in Louisiana, killing two people and sending 22 others to the hospital.
    Mollye Barrows, USA Today, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Earlier this year, an outbreak in Texas killed two children and sickened more than 750 people.
    Eileen Finan, PEOPLE, 4 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • Kirk's assassination is the most high-profile example yet of what extremism researchers at the NCRI see as an increasingly dangerous normalization of political violence—often masked as satire, rebellion, or dark humor online.
    Jesus Mesa, MSNBC Newsweek, 11 Sep. 2025
  • One accommodation, the Rebel Suite, takes its design cues from the sea rebellions of Islay, full of nautical references, striking patterns, and bold green and blue hues.
    Nicole Hoey, Robb Report, 11 Sep. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Revolt.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/revolt. Accessed 18 Sep. 2025.

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