17 November
- noun
- Offensive
:
17 de noviembre
- 17 November carried out a series of attacks targeting U.S. and British officials in Athens.
Examples
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The Greek authorities arrested several members of the 17 November group in the early 2000s.
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In 2002, the 17 November organization was dismantled by Greek authorities.
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Many books have analyzed the motivations and history of 17 November in the context of postwar Greece.
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The 17 November group was responsible for several high-profile assassinations.
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17 November was known for its violent opposition to U.S. involvement in Greece during the 1980s.
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Academics continue to study the impact of 17 November on Greek politics and society.
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17 November engaged in a campaign of bombings and assassinations against foreign diplomats.
Synonyms
A left-wing group in Greece that carried out violent attacks and political killings
Surface Forms
Morphology
The words 'seventeen' and 'November' transparently combine to signal a calendar date (17th of November), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would most likely interpret it as a date. The specific sense of a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization is a proper-name usage and cannot be derived from the literal constituents or usual composition patterns, making the expression arbitrary and unpredictable to learners.
Etymology
The name 17 November comes from a famous event in Greece: on 17 November 1973 students at the Athens Polytechnic rose up against the military government and the army attacked the protest. A violent left-wing group later chose that date as its name to remember the protest, so today 17 November refers to that terrorist group.
