terrorism

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence against civilians in order to attain goals that are political, religious, ideological in nature

   The nation feared terrorism above anything else.

2. 2
   noun

   The system of fear and intimidation put into place during the Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France around 1793-94.

   In England I was proscribed for having vindicated the French Revolution, and I have suffered a rigorous imprisonment in France for having pursued a similar mode of conduct. During the reign of terrorism, I was a close prisoner for eight long months, and remained so above three months after the era of the tenth Thermidor.

3. 3
   noun

   The use of unlawful violence against people or property to achieve political objectives.

   The threat of terrorism to the British lies in the overreaction to it of British governments. Each one in turn clicks up the ratchet of surveillance, intrusion and security. Each one diminishes liberty. David Cameron insists that his latest communications data bill is "vital to counter terrorism". Yet terror is mayhem. It is no threat to freedom. That threat is from counter-terror, from ministers capitulating to securocrats.

4. 4
   noun

   Deliberate misspelling of tourism.

Etymology

From French terrorisme, from terreur + -isme. By surface analysis, terror + -ism. The word first appears in English in 1795 in reference to the Jacobin radicals of France, who ruled during the Reign of Terror.