n. A protracted grassroots campaign of protest and sometimes violent resistance against perceived oppression or military occupation, especially either of two uprisings among Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000, in protest against Israeli occupation of these territories. [Arabic intifāḍa, shudder, awakening, uprising, from intifaḍa, to be shaken, wake up, derived stem of nafaḍa, to shake; see np in the Appendix of Semitic roots.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.