INSURRECTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does insurrection mean? 

• INSURRECTION (noun)
  The noun INSURRECTION has 1 sense:

1. organized opposition to authority; a conflict in which one faction tries to wrest control from another

  Familiarity information: INSURRECTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INSURRECTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Organized opposition to authority; a conflict in which one faction tries to wrest control from another

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

insurrection; rebellion; revolt; rising; uprising

Hypernyms ("insurrection" is a kind of...):

battle; conflict; struggle (an open clash between two opposing groups (or individuals))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "insurrection"):

insurgence; insurgency (an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict)

intifada; intifadah (an uprising by Palestinian Arabs (in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) against Israel in the late 1980s and again in 2000)

mutiny (open rebellion against constituted authority (especially by seamen or soldiers against their officers))

Instance hyponyms:

Great Revolt; Peasant's Revolt (a widespread rebellion in 1381 against poll taxes and other inequities that oppressed the poorer people of England; suppressed by Richard II)

Indian Mutiny; Sepoy Mutiny (discontent with British administration in India led to numerous mutinies in 1857 and 1858; the revolt was put down after several battles and sieges (notably the siege at Lucknow))

Derivation:

insurrectional; insurrectionary (of or relating to or given to insurrection)

insurrectionist (a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions))

 Context examples 

Never had there been insurrection so sudden, so short, and so successful.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But if they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise insurrections, he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses and men.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

She carried herself in the most stately fashion, so that as I looked at her majestic entrance, and at the pose which she struck as she glanced at my father, I was reminded of the Queen of the Peruvians as, in the person of Miss Polly Hinton, she incited Boy Jim and myself to insurrection.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment; for, in such conjunctures, when he used, merely as a trial, to consider which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought only of raising an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)