oppression

From Middle English oppression, from Old French oppression, from Latin oppressio (“a pressing down, violence, oppression”), from opprimere, past participle oppressus (“to press down”); see oppress.

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oppression (countable and uncountable, plural oppressions)

1. The exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
   • Sir Walter Raleigh

     Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these forenamed kings […] pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves […]

2. The act of oppressing, or the state of being oppressed.

   The oppression of the poor by the aristocracy was one cause of the French Revolution.

3. A feeling of being oppressed.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 7, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     […] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.

   Our oppression was lifted by the reappearance of the sun.

• oppress

• oppression in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• oppression in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• IPA^(key): /ɔ.pʁɛ.sjɔ̃/

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oppression f (plural oppressions)

1. oppression
2. (Louisiana) asthma