direct action

noun

: action that seeks to achieve an end directly and by the most immediately effective means (such as a boycott or strike)

Examples of direct action in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Others maintain that massive protests that give people direct action is the better option while hundreds of thousands this past week eagerly embraced Booker's marathon floor speech, which coupled with the Wisconsin judicial race gave Democrats their first confidence boost since Trump returned. —Phillip M. Bailey, USA Today, 7 Apr. 2025

And outlets that cast Southern activists’ direct action as valiant often portrayed civil rights activism outside of the South as unreasonable, disruptive, and potentially dangerous. — Made By History, Time, 4 Apr. 2025

In other cases, people are taking more direct action. —Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 4 Mar. 2025

Prosecutors successfully argued that these communications were part of a broader conspiracy to disrupt the election certification by organizing and encouraging others to participate in more direct action. —Amy Cooter, The Conversation, 22 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1912, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for direct action

• benefaction
• counteraction
• interaction
• liquefaction
• putrefaction
• rarefaction
• satisfaction
• stupefaction
• tumefaction
• abstraction
• attraction
• compaction

Legal Definition

direct action

noun

1

: an action in which the plaintiff sues a person's insurer without first obtaining a judgment against the insured or joining the insured

2

: a suit by a shareholder for an injury to himself or herself independent from any injury to the corporation

called also individual action

compare derivative action