PERSECUTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does persecution mean? 

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

1. the act of persecuting (especially on the basis of race or religion)

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERSECUTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of persecuting (especially on the basis of race or religion)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

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

abuse; ill-treatment; ill-usage; maltreatment (cruel or inhumane treatment)

Domain category:

faith; religion; religious belief (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny)

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

oppression; subjugation (the act of subjugating by cruelty)

pogrom (organized persecution of an ethnic group (especially Jews))

torture; torturing (the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason)

Derivation:

persecute (cause to suffer)

 Context examples 

“Good God!” I cried. “What can it mean, this relentless persecution?”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In his puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

That upon a quarrel among us, I was set on shore on this coast, where I walked forward, without knowing whither, till he delivered me from the persecution of those execrable Yahoos.

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

All the feuds of countless generations, all the hatreds and cruelties of their narrow history, all the memories of ill-usage and persecution were to be purged that day.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

From the latter circumstance it may be presumed that, whatever might be our heroine's opinion of him, his admiration of her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

On the 23rd you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. The situation is becoming an impossible one.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A form of schizophrenia characterized by delusions (of persecution or grandeur or jealousy); symptoms may include anger and anxiety and aloofness and doubts about gender identity; unlike other types of schizophrenia the patients are usually presentable and (if delusions are not acted on) may function in an apparently normal manner.

(Paraphrenia, NCI Thesaurus)

Her visit was, I remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more.

(White Fang, by Jack London)