Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To ward off or keep away; drive back: repel insects.
- v. To offer resistance to; fight against: repel an invasion.
- v. To refuse to accept; reject: a company that was trying to repel a hostile takeover.
- v. To turn away from; spurn.
- v. To cause aversion or distaste in: Your rudeness repels everyone. See Synonyms at disgust. See Usage Note at repulse.
- v. To be resistant to; be incapable of absorbing or mixing with: Oil repels water.
- v. Physics To present an opposing force to; push back or away by a force: Electric charges of the same sign repel one another.
- v. To offer a resistant force to something.
- v. To cause aversion or distaste: behavior that repels.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To drive back; force to return; check the advance of; repulse: as, to repel an assailant.
- To encounter in any manner with effectual resistance; resist; oppose; reject: as, to repel an encroachment; to repel an argument.
- To drive back or away: the opposite of attract. See repulsion.
- Synonyms and Decline, Reject, etc. (see refuse), parry, ward off, defeat.
- To act with force in opposition to force impressed; antagonize.
- In medicine, to prevent such an afflux of fluids to any particular part as would render it tumid or swollen.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, sports To save (a shot)
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To drive back; to force to return; to check the advance of; to repulse as, to
repel an enemy or an assailant. - v. To resist or oppose effectually.
- v. To act with force in opposition to force impressed; to exercise repulsion.
WordNet 3.0
- v. fill with distaste
- v. reject outright and bluntly
- v. be repellent to; cause aversion in
- v. force or drive back
- v. cause to move back by force or influence
Etymologies
- From Middle English repellen, from Old French * repeller, from Latin repellere ("to drive back"), from re- ("back") + pellere ("to drive"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English repellen, from Old French repeller, from Latin repellere : re-, re- + pellere, to drive. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Poles of the same name repel each other; poles of unlike name attract each other.”
“Magnetic power generators make electricity in the following way: If you want to generate cheap electricity, you have to understand that opposites attract and likes repel, which is the essence of magnetic power.”
“So while 'repel' may not be the right word, these chinos are water resistant, a brisk shake and all the water fell to the ground.”
“With a similar obnoxious edge to Beyonce's infamous 'if you like it than you should have put a ring on it' lyric, it will either hit a big red 'repel' button or go straight in as your song of the year.”
“I even had bites all over my bum following an emergency toilet situation which caught me off guard as I had not had the foresight to "repel" this area of my body!”
TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
“National Enquirer, she's taking time out to focus on "inner growth" and figure out why she seems to constantly "repel" men.”
“One corpsman remarked in a letter home, “The engineers and technicians teach us to be soil soldiers, a name they call us here, because we are the army who are training to repel the enemies of the land.””
“Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.”
Simon & Schuster: The Conservative Assault on the Constitution
“Another friend of mine swears by rubbing dryer sheets on his exposed skin to repel mosquito's.”
“But Dickens 'sentences repel me, so I'll have to take Tyler's word for it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘repel’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Public List: Two by Fives
This is an experiment in public lists--something I've been thinking about for some time. The goal is to create a collection of short, powerful, evocative words.
This is an open list. A...icy, howl, hymn, thorn, fire, vile, mist, blunt, scum, dark, shot, gleam and 221 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Something is wrong here
Spelling mistakes and other verbal blunders
abolishment, aerobic numbers, affidavid, all of the sudden, alphabeticalize, anticlimatic, anchors away, arm's way, artical, ashfault, assumably, baited breath and 176 more...
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See Usage Note at
Being a list of words with the phrase "See Usage Note at" in their definitions. Most of these come from the American Heritage Dictionary.
upon, seldom, among, compliment, thus, further, predicament, latter, repel, inflammable, gentleman, adage and 12 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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SAT Vocab
Redundant.
problematic, proclivity, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profane, profligate, profound, profusion, proliferation, prolific, prologue and 455 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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Mary and Max (2009)
Words from 2009 'Mary and Max' film.
muddy, puddle, birthmark, piggyback, pensive, gumnut, pompom, salvage, takeaway, oven, shed, deliberate and 112 more...
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Scriptie: The Two Towers
dampen, treacherous, black gate, man-flesh, precious, elvish, dwarf, pursuit, quarry, hobbit, sprinters, horse lords and 236 more...
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Gotim
Aries, fire, chaos, destruction, Mars, aggression, bold, competetive, conflict, raw, black, red and 165 more...
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DYSLEXIC'S DREAD
Words That Make Sense in Reverse Too! Bad news for a dyslexic, 'cause s/he's got no clue if s/he read the word correctly or not, as opposed to a palindrome (i.e., no mistake possible, cf. "Dyslexic...
tool, lever, nap, pool, leer, leek, desserts, strop, doom, ukiah, yaws, ward and 213 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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Theme Prompts
There's a fiction meme (mostly on Livejournal) where writers use words as a prompt for a short story snippet. I've been collecting the words that show up on these lists as prompts for creative writ...
white, black, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet, queen, king, prince and 407 more...
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SAT Words That Mean 'To Make Worse or...
A list of negative SAT words that mean 'to make worse or irritate.' Based on Gruber's SAT Word Master word list. Categorizing words can help you to memorize more effectively.
alienate, antagonize, contradict, dispute, fend off, embitter, estrange, incense, infuriate, nettle, oppugn, oppose and 4 more...
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Grade 2 Week 5
Grade 2 Week 5
roll, role, model, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, compass, magnetic, force, attraction, repel and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for repel.
oroboros leper in reverse Dec 27, 2006