Home US English do violence to

Definition of do violence to in English:

do violence to

phrase

  • Damage or adversely affect.

    ‘how can we regulate access to weapons without doing violence to the constitution?’
    • ‘If one tries to categorize commercial agricultural production or wage labor activity solely as resistance, one does violence to more than language.’
    • ‘At times the attempt to draw literal, historical analogies does violence to Stevensian irony.’
    • ‘Six wives said their husbands had threatened to do violence to their children or to their parents and five had been threatened by their husbands with lethal weapons.’
    • ‘I'd agree with reviewers who say that to summarise or comment on the plot is simply to do violence to the work.’
    • ‘He certainly looked like he would like to do violence to Peters at that point.’
    • ‘We have to choose knowing that when we are violent to our enemies, we do violence to ourselves.’
    • ‘To fail to follow this rule is to do violence to the positions of the king and queen.’
    • ‘A temperance newspaper proclaimed, typically, that ‘[n]o man can drink intoxicating liquors… without doing violence to his manhood.’’
    • ‘And, at every step, those doing violence to the system were claiming that they were defending it.’
    • ‘These are chance events, in that they could have been different without doing violence to the laws of Nature.’