civil disobedience

1. 1.

   a group's refusal to obey a law because they believe the law is immoral (as in protest against discrimination)

   “Thoreau wrote a famous essay justifying civil disobedience”

   Broaderdirect action

   Narrowersit-inprotest march

Questions about civil disobedience

What does civil disobedience mean?

civil disobedience means "a group's refusal to obey a law because they believe the law is immoral (as in protest against discrimination)".

Is civil disobedience a common word?

civil disobedience is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.