What is "retaliatory"

Usage examples of "retaliatory".

Secondly, any aerial approach will probably result in Electro taking retaliatory action directly against his hostages, probably by firing explosive energy bolts at the automobiles.

However, the rest of this month will be expiatory, not retaliatory, which means the consuls of next year will inherit the business.

The Calamarian cruiser fired a storm of retaliatory bolts, while the remaining Corellian gunships spread out, launching themselves into the fray .

The abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty and encouragement of the Fenian Raids by the American people had put the Canadians on their mettle and stiffened their backbone, so that neither retaliatory threats or honeyed allurements had any effect in changing their minds from carving out their own destiny under the broad folds of the Union Jack.

Sturgeon had taken the tritest of themes in science fiction, a United States nearly destroyed by an enemy nuclear attack debating the ethics of striking back, because the explosion of its retaliatory weapons would raise the radiation level in the atmosphere to the point where every higher organism would be eradicated, thus eliminating any hope for another creature to rise to a state of civilization.

Considering the situation in Yokosuka, as well as the continuing threat that the Russians may make a retaliatory strike at any moment, I suggest that we raise our readiness level to Defense Condition Two.

Once they reached an intersection and turned off the access road, they felt less vulnerable to a retaliatory attack from Xian or his lieutenants.

So his guards, excited and talkative as ever, had told him everything: the death of Verden, the defeat of the Norse clans, the massive retaliatory strike by the mysterious naval attack aircraft, the impending doom waiting to befall Dominique.

A bust on the bad check at the least, a fire-bombing or other massive retaliatory strike at worst, without Arctor having any notion what was coming down.

The broadcast media is calling for retaliatory strikes, without bothering to clarify where, exactly, the strikes should occur, since rebel strongholds have not yet been identified.

During the tense moments that followed, emergency preparations for a nuclear retaliatory strike had been engaged, the Air Force planes actually in the air before NORAD's PAVE PAWS early-warning radar had detected the human error.

Each incursion into the swamp brings a retaliatory strike on the villages and farmlands beyond.

Everett had heard of retaliatory raids by kibbutzim to break a few heads in the old quar­ter.

The launch, the destruction of one of the Sky Demons landing craft would not have gone unnoticed, and their retaliatory fire would be swift and deadly.

If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.