Retaliation

How to spell retaliation

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce retaliation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retaliation mean?

1. nounThe act of returning harm, injury, or an attack in response to a previous one.

Retaliation in a sentence

• The company feared retaliation from competitors after raising its prices.

• In retaliation for the strike, management cut overtime pay.

Where does retaliation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb retaliare, meaning 'to pay back in kind', which was built from the prefix re- ('back, in return') and talio, a legal term for a punishment matching the offence exactly. That noun talio underlies the famous Roman principle lex talionis, the 'law of like for like' that demanded an eye for an eye, so the idea of measured, equivalent revenge is baked into the word's very root. Retaliare passed into late medieval Latin and from there into English in the early 1600s, with the noun retaliation appearing soon after to name the act of returning harm for harm. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: the single l and the -ation ending, since writers sometimes double the l or reach for the wrong vowel. Its quieter relative is 'retaliate', and recognising the shared tali- root helps fix the second a in place.

How the word is built

• re- (back, in return)
• tali- (from Latin talio: a payment in kind)
• -ation (noun of action)