public violence
1
5.6
- noun
- /ˈpʌblɪk ˈvaɪələns/
:
violencia pública
- He set out his arguments by positing a hypothetical "natural condition of mankind" prior to government, whose unsettling details were intended to exaggerate the public violence in early modern England.
Examples
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Conversely, one reason for the attraction to the explanation of public violence in terms of childhood trauma is that it makes possible a strictly private accounting for public violence.
Academic text (1997) -
At the time, 270 mineworkers were arrested for public violence, illegal possession of dangerous weapons, illegal possession of firearms, murder, and attempted murder.
Blog text (4) -
As in many other countries, the security forces reacted to public violence, and the informational aspect of their activities produced criminal statistics and a variety of reports, both public and classified.
Academic text (1998) -
Conversely, one reason for the attraction to the explanation of public violence in terms of childhood trauma is that it makes possible a strictly private accounting for public violence.
Academic text (1997) -
They are what private interiors look like—spectacles of public violence, wound landscapes.
Academic text (1997) -
Others argue that Castro's resort to public violence against a movement that the government has repeatedly pronounced dead demonstrates the resiliency of Cuba's embryonic opposition.
Academic text (2006) -
Men in early modern England, then, did not shun unlawful public violence as dishonorable; they saw it as the enactment of an exalted code of hypermasculinity.
Academic text (2009) -
To the very extent that private and public communicate in the opening of bodies and persons and in the gathering around the wound, one detects a radical mutation and relocation of the public sphere, now centered on the shared and reproducible spectacles of pathological public violence.
Academic text (1997) -
The protests turned chaotic as demonstrators engaged in public violence, clashing with the police in the streets.
-
After the match, there was a surge of public violence in the city, leading to numerous arrests and injuries.
Synonyms
329
4.1
A violent public disturbance by a crowd that damages property
33
5.2
Violent behavior by a crowd that disturbs the public
An event in public where a group becomes violent and damages property
Antonyms
How Violent
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a straightforward adjective + noun combination: 'public' specifies location/visibility and 'violence' denotes deliberate physical force, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to violent actions occurring in public. The construction is compositional and follows regular noun-phrase formation found across languages, making the meaning immediately accessible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Public violence may come from the clear picture of people fighting or hurting others out in a town square where everyone can see them. The word public shows the place (in front of others) and violence shows the harm, so the phrase now means 'violent actions by a crowd in a public place'.