Word Finder - oppressed

definition

To keep down by unjust force.

example

The rural poor were oppressed by the land-owners.

definition

To make sad or gloomy.

example

We were oppressed by the constant grey skies.

definition

Physically to press down on (someone) with harmful effects; to smother, crush.

definition

Subject to oppression.

The people are oppressed and poor.

The winners were hailed throughout Greece as champions of the oppressed.

He was good-natured when not crossed, generous to dependents who made themselves useful to him, and indefatigable in defending the cause of those who were oppressed by the systems with which he was at war.

After his two years in the French galleys, if not before, Knox suffered permanently from gravel and dyspepsia, and he confesses that his nature "was for the most part oppressed with melancholy."

Meanwhile it had needed all the diplomatic armoury of the powers to prevent Mahmud hastening to the assistance of his "oppressed subjects."

The former community was, he says, sorely oppressed by the covetous Cistercians.

Cyprus was now harshly governed by a lieutenant, and the condition of the natives, who had been much oppressed under the Lusignan dynasty, became worse.

She is the daughter of Ouranos and Gaia; and after Metis she becomes the bride of Zeus.6 Pindar describes her as born in a golden car from the primeval Oceanus, source of all things, to the sacred height of Olympus to be the consort of Zeus the saviour; and she bears the same august epithet, as the symbol of social justice and the refuge for the oppressed.'

This success recommended him to the people of Spain, more particularly to the Lusitanian tribes in the west, whom Roman generals and governors of Sulla's party had plundered and oppressed.

Italy was and ever has been a land of cities; and, ever since the downfall of Rome and the decay of the municipal system, the bishops of the cities had really been at the head of the peaceful and industrial part of their population, and were a natural refuge for the oppressed, and sometimes for the mutinous and the evil doers, from the military and civil powers of the duke or count or judge, too often a rule of cruelty or fraud.

Here the object of the insurgents was in most cases to break down the local oligarchy, who engrossed all municipal office and oppressed the meaner citizens; but in less numerous instances their end was to win charters from lords (almost always ecclesiastical lords) who had hitherto refused to grant them.

Duke Richard, on the other hand, considered himself as wrongfully oppressed, and excluded from his legitimate position as a prince of the blood and a chief councillor of the crown.

The helpless natives were oppressed and robbed by the company and its servants in every possible way.

He was no friend of arbitrary government; but he judged it better that oppressed nationalities and persecuted Liberals should suffer than that Europe should be again plunged into war.

But neither Sheridan nor Fox was capable of that sustained and overflowing indignation at outraged justice and oppressed humanity, that consuming moral fire, which burst forth again and again from the chief manager of the impeachment, with such scorching might as drove even the cool and intrepid Hastings beyond all self-control, and made him cry out with protests and exclamations like a criminal writhing under the scourge.

One of the most common charges against Burke was that he allowed his imagination and pity to be touched only by the sorrows of kings and queens, and forgot the thousands of oppressed and famine-stricken toilers of the land.

Then the oppressed nation took courage and began to demand pardon for the innocent and even justice upon murderers.

Wherever the cry of the oppressed goes up from Greek against Greek, it was the voice of Athens which should first remind the oppressor that Heliene differed from barbarian in postponing the use of force to the persuasions of equal law.

At last, in 1566, the queen placed the sword of state in Sidney's strong grasp. Shane was driven helplessly from point to point, and perished miserably at the hands of the MacDonnells, whom he had so often oppressed and insulted.

Those natives who retained land were often oppressed by their stronger neighbours, and sometimes actually swindled out of their property.

Of the prelates employed by Strafford in this persecution the ablest was John Bramhall (1594-1663) of Derry, who not only oppressed the ministers but insulted them by coarse language.

Towards the end of the 17th ing legal protection to all, has altered the slavish character of the oppressed Irish.

The European merchants above Khartum had sold their posts to Arab agents, who oppressed the natives in every conceivable fashion.

These methods will only stoke the fire of resentment among the oppressed.

I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life.

It was something white by the door--the statue of a sphinx, which also oppressed him.

The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya.

In after ages the oppressed people saw in his love for Israel and his patient resignation their own realized ideal.

A constant restlessness oppressed him; his sight gave way; his conversation became an extraordinary mixture of metaphors; and it was only at intervals that gleams of his former power broke out, especially when some old chord of association was struck in natural science or physical geography.

Every child dreams of slaying dragons, hitting the game-winning homerun, rescuing the oppressed and exacting justice on the villain.

In Third World nationalism it is the middle class intelligentsia oppressed by imperialism.

Damaged or different people drawn to find spiritual kinship among oppressed people perhaps?

The land-hungry Campbells of Argyll annoyed and oppressed them; reducing them virtually landless and to a state of lawlessness.

Now the previously silent, oppressed masses ' can form a multitude capable of bringing about radical steps in the liberation of humankind.

Cantle's report is the first time in an official document that the white working class is identified as an oppressed minority.

The oppressed group is seen as less than human; their value is purely monetary; they are in fact, property ' .

The vast majority of those who support NATO do so because they understand that the Kosovars were being brutally oppressed by Milosevic.

For the first time in Iraq's modern history the Shias, a long oppressed majority, are likely to take power.

The Soviet Press knows how to describe in lurid terms the fate of the oppressed peasants in Poland.

He differs from Amos, however, in being more deeply in sympathy with the sufferings of the oppressed peasantry.

Governor Tryon manifested no sympathy for the oppressed and sought only the thorough suppression of the disturbance, which was organized in the spring of 1768 by Regulators, " for regulating public grievances and abuses of power."

It is not wonderful that the Quakers, persecuted and oppressed at home and in New England, should turn their eyes to the unoccupied parts of America, and cherish the hope of founding, amidst their woods, some refuge from oppression, and some likeness of a city of God upon earth.

Supposing that the Porte would yield to diplomatic pressure and menace so far as to make some reasonable concessions, he delivered his famous Moscow speech, in which he declared that if Europe would not secure a better position for the oppressed Sla y s he would act alone.

The difficulties experienced in applying the 1880 decree were great, but the perseverance of British officers gave the oppressed peasants, in 1885, an equitable law, which has been since improved by the decree of 1900.

But he met with opposition from the turbulent nobility and the clergy, who had been deprived of many privileges, and he failed to conciliate the communes, which were oppressed by taxes and beginning to aspire to autonomy.

Thus, he would sally forth by night to seek for the destitute and oppressed.

He saw France cut up, partitioned and reduced to the rank of a second-rate power, even to that of an oppressed nation.

Most of these have been important in focusing and sustaining the self-identity of people oppressed by racism.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

In reality leadership, having risen above the oppressed class, inevitably succumbs to the pressure of the ruling class.