cracked down; cracking down; cracks down
: to take positive regulatory or disciplinary action
Synonyms
Examples of crackdown in a Sentence
Noun
Companies that pollute are the target of a new crackdown.
Verb
a repressive government that cracked down on political demonstrations
Recent Examples on the Web
Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Affairs, 12 Nov. 2024
Citizens organized mass protests across the country and were met with a brutal crackdown.
—Tirana Hassan, The Mercury News, 6 Nov. 2024
Andrew Keatts, Axios, 19 Nov. 2024
Earlier this year, Costco started cracking down on non-members that used someone else’s card, in addition to raising its membership fees for the first time in seven years.
—Francisco Velasquez, Quartz, 18 Nov. 2024
See all Example Sentences for crackdown 
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Noun
On China, for example, Trump displayed a recurring willingness to give ground on other issues—the crackdown in Hong Kong, the repression in Xinjiang, the arrest of a senior executive of the Chinese tech company Huawei—in return for a better bilateral trade deal.
—Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Affairs, 12 Nov. 2024
Citizens organized mass protests across the country and were met with a brutal crackdown.
—Tirana Hassan, The Mercury News, 6 Nov. 2024
Verb
In the aftermath of that change, medical exemptions surged, with a cottage industry popping up of doctors specializing in granting exemptions, causing the legislature to crack down on those practices with SB 276.
—Andrew Keatts, Axios, 19 Nov. 2024
Earlier this year, Costco started cracking down on non-members that used someone else’s card, in addition to raising its membership fees for the first time in seven years.
—Francisco Velasquez, Quartz, 18 Nov. 2024
See all Example Sentences for crackdown
Dictionary Entries Near crackdown
Cite this Entry
“Crackdown.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crackdown. Accessed 24 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share