Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To hold back or prevent by an act of volition.
- intransitive verb To put down or subdue by force.
- intransitive verb To end, limit, or restrain, as by intimidation or other action.
- intransitive verb Psychology To exclude (painful or disturbing memories, for example) automatically or unconsciously from the conscious mind.
- intransitive verb To prevent (the transcription of a gene or the synthesis of a protein) by the combination of a protein with an operator gene.
- intransitive verb To prevent or limit the synthesis of (a protein).
- intransitive verb To take repressive action.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To press back or down effectually; crush; quell; put down; subdue; suppress.
- To check; restrain; keep under due restraint.
- Synonyms To curb, smother, overcome, overpower.
- 1 and Restrict, etc. See
restrain . - noun The act of subduing.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To press again.
- noun obsolete The act of repressing.
- transitive verb To press back or down effectually; to crush down or out; to quell; to subdue; to supress
- transitive verb Hence, to check; to restrain; to keep back.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The act of
repressing . - verb To
press again. - verb To
prevent forcefully anupheaval fromdeveloping further . - verb Hence, to
check ; to keep back.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb block the action of
- verb put down by force or intimidation
- verb conceal or hide
- verb put out of one's consciousness
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Inebriation, if not the wisest way to console and repress, is at least an opportune way to live with the knowledge that it is impossible to win affection.
'Pleasure is now, and ought to be, your business': Stealing Sexuality in Jane Austen's _Juvenilia_ 2006
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Selling ideology not to inspire, but to repress is his main game, and he is quite good at it.
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The groans, impossible to repress, that issued through the lips of
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That's why is has to do with the unacknowledged and not the unknown, since ultimate realness is where we ALREADY ARE and this means our lives are grounded in that which we may "repress" (collectively or otherwise); however, please note that when you repress something, say death, you have to know what to repress in order to repress it.
Humanity in general, and America in particular, have become contemptuous of wisdom 2009
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Obama called on some regimes which "repress" their people, but everyone knows that those include only regimes which object to the American will.
Thursday, January 29, 2009 As'ad 2009
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The more I ceased to "repress" the political events of the Bush years, is the more I found myself overtaken with moral/rational outrage.
A personal note to my friends (and otherwise) at Op-Ed News. 2008
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It's sort of set me up to brew two articles I have been dieing to produce without having to "repress" myself .. one on BANKING and one on Arctic Sovereignty .. which are both diatribes REALLY against insitutionalized violence.
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It's sort of set me up to brew two articles I have been dieing to produce without having to "repress" myself .. one on BANKING and one on Arctic Sovereignty .. which are both diatribes REALLY against insitutionalized violence.
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Plus, the educated American operates under a common understanding that we are to "deal with" unpleasantness in our past rather than "repress" it, and then seek something called closure.
NPR Topics: News 2010
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In the case of a symptom, I "repress" this death and try not to think about it, but the repressed trauma returns in the symptom.
Notes in Samsara 2010
chained_bear commented on the word repress
"But regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable. Sooner or later, there has to be a backlash. In Iran, we're watching one unfold."
—Anne Appelbaum, "Woman Power," Slate, June 22, 2009 (seen here)
June 24, 2009
seanahan commented on the word repress
Is there any regime that has lasted forever? What is the longest continuing government in the world? Pretty much every country I can think of in Europe has abandoned the monarchy in the last two hundred years. Most of Asia has undergone significant changes since World War I (or II). Africa can't have that many stable regimes, most have probably been overturned in the last half century. One could argue that all governments are inherently unstable.
June 25, 2009
bilby commented on the word repress
It's an article with a very weak central premise, which in any case doesn't make much of a broader point about regimes.
June 25, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word repress
There is such a thing as stable governments, or as you prefer, "regimes." I think the article does have a point, but if you don't, that's fine. I was just posting a usage, anyway.
June 25, 2009
bilby commented on the word repress
Holland, Sweden, Denmark, England and Spain haven't abandoned their monarchies and they've all been key players in the development of the EC and then EU. Even monarchies though can have their periods of instability.
It's not clear what you are implying about instability. If Bush/McCain is voted out and Obama voted in, is that necessarily instability simply because it is not 'continuing government' in the sense of having the same party & leader? The organs of state continue to function as a more or less seamless transition is made from the old to the new.
One of the more specious arguments in defense of the current Australian system (constitutional monarchy) is that we have had 'continuous stable government since 1901', thereby implying that another system could not have achieved this.
June 26, 2009
dailyword commented on the word repress
Holmes does this sometimes, according to Watson.
June 18, 2012