0 present participle of retaliate
1 to hurt someone or do something harmful to someone because they have done or said something harmful to you:
If someone insults you, don't retaliate as it only makes the situation worse.
The demonstrators threw rocks at the police, who retaliated by firing blanks into the crowd.
The terrorists retaliated against the government with a bomb attack.
One child may believe he or she would be justified in retaliating, whereas the other rules this out on ethical grounds.
He does not believe, however, that we can infer the morality of retaliating from the morality of threatening to thus retaliate.
These will be the people who will prevent you from retaliating.
It continues to be an incentive to retaliate, and it gives rise to people getting together and eventually retaliating by violence.
In other words, it opens the way to another country retaliating—and retaliating in quite different circumstances—with only a slight modification of the words used.
We are a trading nation, and if we start retaliating we may do ourselves more damage than we do to our competitors.
It was put to me this morning on one programme that some price might be paid for not retaliating.
Some of us want this country to start retaliating itself.
