Crossword clues for oppress
oppress
- Give a hard time
- Tyrannize over
- Burden
- Work with fourth estate to subjugate
- Keep in subjection
- Keep down work on all the papers
- Subjugate by force
- Subjugate work by the media
- Subdue section of media after work
- Put down work papers
- Put down iron after crease initially comes out of collar
- Top policeman journalists treat harshly
- Terrifying woman's repeated power to knock out a grand bully
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Oppress \Op*press"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Oppressed; p. pr. & vb. n. Oppressing.] [F. oppresser, LL. oppressare, fr. L. oppressus, p. p. of opprimere; ob (see Ob-) + premere to press. See Press.]
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To impose excessive burdens upon; to overload; hence, to treat with unjust rigor or with cruelty.
--Wyclif.For thee, oppress[`e]d king, am I cast down.
--Shak.Behold the kings of the earth; how they oppress Thy chosen!
--Milton. To ravish; to violate. [Obs.]
--Chaucer.-
To put down; to crush out; to suppress. [Obs.]
The mutiny he there hastes to oppress.
--Shak. To produce a sensation of weight in (some part of the body); as, my lungs are oppressed by the damp air; excess of food oppresses the stomach.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mid-14c., from Old French opresser "oppress, afflict; torment, smother" (13c.), from Medieval Latin oppressare, frequentative of Latin opprimere "press against, press together, press down;" figuratively "crush, put down, subdue, prosecute relentlessly" (in Late Latin "to rape"), from ob "against" (see ob-) + premere "to press, push" (see press (v.1)).\n\nIt is the due [external] restraint and not the moderation of rulers that constitutes a state of liberty; as the power to oppress, though never exercised, does a state of slavery.
[St. George Tucker, "View of the Constitution of the United States," 1803]
\nRelated: Oppressed; oppressing.Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context obsolete English) Physically to press down on (someone) with harmful effects; to smother, crush. 2 (context transitive English) To keep down by force 3 (context transitive English) To make sad or gloomy
WordNet
Usage examples of "oppress".
Distracted with the care, not of acquiring, but of preserving an empire, oppressed with age and infirmities, careless of fame, and satiated with power, all his prospects of life were closed.
He heard his complaints with great patience and affability, assured him of his assistance and protection, and even undertook to introduce him to the empress-queen, who would not suffer the weakest of her subjects to be oppressed, much less disregard the cause of an injured young nobleman, who, by his own services, and those of his family, was peculiarly entitled to her favour.
Even the succulent blue lilies--a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses--hung their long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like the draught from a volcano.
The most wealthy families ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes.
The Indian stood despoiled of lands, The Negro bound with servile bands, Oppressed through weary years of toil, His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
For it is not want the avenger of iniquity, nor the adverse fortune of your parents, nor violent necessity that has thus oppressed you with beggary, but a devout will and Christ-like election, by which ye have chosen that life as the best, which God Almighty made man as well by word as by example declared to be the best.
Yet, during all this time and under all conditions these bereaved and oppressed ones, with faces set towards His luminous Threshold, held fast to the cord of patience and resignation, engaged themselves in offering fervent prayers and supplications and committed all their affairs to the care of the Blessed Beauty.
Her characters are not overwhelmed in a deterministic world, oppressed by the forces of heredity and environment.
Oppressed and laden with all these aforenamed frightes and terrors, I began to imagine that the Dragon was flying about my head, and with the noyse of hir scritching teeth and tearing clawes to take hould vpon me with hir deuouring iawes: my heart giuing mee to vnderstand, that the carniuorus Woolfe which I drempt of, was a presage of this my last doubted end.
In the cathedral at Antwerp there is a representation of hell carved in wood, whose marvellous elaborateness astonishes, and whose painful expressiveness oppresses, every beholder.
A God who comes out of His place to visit the wrong done on the earth, and be a refuge for the oppressed, and a help in time of trouble, to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the men of this world be no more exalted against them.
His politic head has learned by this time that there is more to be gotten by oppressing his feudatories, and pillaging his allies, than fighting with the Turks for the Holy Sepulchre.
Oppressed by his gloominess, Foma had come down on the deck from his cabin, and, for some time, had been standing in the shadow of some wares covered with tarpaulin, and listened to the admonitive and gentle voice of the preacher.
Albans, and the resentment of the English clergy prompted them to rejoice whenever the popes were humbled and oppressed.
They inveigh against the governments of Europe, because, as they say, they favour the powerful and oppress the weak.