Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A protracted grassroots campaign of protest and sometimes violent resistance against perceived oppression or military occupation, especially either of two uprisings among Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000, in protest against Israeli occupation of these territories.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An uprising, such as the Palestinian resistance to the 1987 Israeli occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip or the 2011 revolt against Assad's rule in Syria.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Arabic intifāḍa, shudder, awakening, uprising, from intifaḍa, to be shaken, wake up, derived stem of nafaḍa, to shake; see npṣ́ in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Arabic انتفاضة (intifāḍa, "shaking off, uprising, insurrection")

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Examples

  • Facebook said the page had begun as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used the term "intifada" with its connotation of violent revolt.

    BBC News - Home 2011

  • The Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas put it bluntly on the micro-blogging site, Twitter -- where thousands follow him -- when he asked why no one was paying attention to the Uighur "intifada," the Arabic word for uprising that is usually associated with Palestinians fighting back against Israeli occupation.

    Mona Eltahawy: If Only the Uighurs Were Buddhist and China Was Israel 2009

  • In that interview, with a department employee listening in, she explained that the root of the word intifada meant “shaking off,” but that it had acquired other connotations because of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » EEOC Determination in the Debbie Almontaser / Khalil Gibran International Academy / Intifada NYC T-Shirt Case 2010

  • The founding principle quit after she had defended the use of the word intifada on t-shirts.

    CNN Transcript Aug 21, 2007 2007

  • The controversy reached a fever pitch when Almontaser was quoted defending the use of the word intifada on a T-shirt.

    CNN Transcript Sep 4, 2007 2007

  • There are worse things than war, if the intifada is indeed a war.

    Zion's Vital Signs P. J. O'Rourke 2001

  • There are worse things than war, if the intifada is indeed a war.

    Zion's Vital Signs P. J. O'Rourke 2001

  • In that interview, with a department employee listening in, she explained that the root of the word intifada meant "shaking off," but that it had acquired other connotations because of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

    Vos Iz Neias - (Yiddish:What's News?) admin 2010

  • The word intifada means rebellion or uprising in English, and refers to the Second or al-Aqsa Intifada, referring to the wave of Palestinian terrorism since 2000.

    New Zeal 2009

  • Her 'crime' was accurately translating the Arabic word 'intifada' into 'shaking off' instead of ranting against the Palestinian rights movement in the Occupied Territories.

    iToot Stream 2009

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