| Main Entry: | Intolerable Acts |
| Part of Speech: | n |
| Definition: | a series of laws passed by the British in 1774 in an attempt to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party; also called [Coercive Acts], Punitive Acts |
| Example: | Resentment of the Intolerable Acts contributed to the outbreak of the American revolution. |
Also known as the Coercive Acts; a series of British measures passed in 1774 and designed to punish the Massachusetts colonists for the Boston Tea Party. For example, one of the laws closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the tea that they had destroyed. Although the acts were intended to check colonial opposition to Britain, they only inflamed it.
| a chattering or flighty, light-headed person. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |