3 uses
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Definition
to force into submission
in various senses, including:
- when a people are defeated in battle and oppressed — as in "The Romans subjugated most of Europe."
- when something is treated as less important than something else — as in "subjugate the desires of the individual to the desires of the state," or "subjugate instinct to reason"
- An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.Book Fourteen — 1812 (1% in)
- Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or...Book Fourteen — 1812 (1% in)
- In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected with the event.Book Fifteen — 1812-13 (76% in)
There are no more uses of "subjugate" in War and Peace.
Typical Usage
(best examples)