repugnancy

repugnancy

English

Etymology

From Middle English repugnancie, from Latin repugnantia.[1][2] By surface analysis, repugnant +‎ -cy. Doublet of repugnance.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɹɪˈpʌɡnənsi/

Noun

repugnancy (countable and uncountable, plural repugnancies)

  1. The quality of being repugnant: offensiveness, repulsion.
    • 1644, Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex‎[1], London: John Field, Quest. VIII, page 49:
      […] howsoever nature dictates, that government is necessary for the safety of the society, yet every singular person, by corruption and selfe-love, hath a naturall aversenesse and repugnancie to submit to any; every man would be a King himselfe […]
    • 1673, Hannah Woolley, “Some choice Observations for a Gentlewomans Behaviour at Table”, in The Gentlewomans Companion‎[2], London: Dorman Newman, page 70:
      If you be carved with any thing […] which you do not like, conceal (as much as in you lieth) your repugnancies, and receive it however: And though your disgust many times is invincible, and it would be insufferable tyranny to require you should eat what your stomach nauseates; yet it will shew your civility to accept it, though you let it lye on your plate, pretending to eat, till you meet with a fit opportunity of changing your plate, without any palpable discovery of your disgust.
    • 1893, Mordecai Cubitt Cooke, “The Common Toad”, in Our Reptiles and Batrachians‎[3], London: W.H. Allen, page 118:
      Even Pennant, with all his repugnancy to the toad, could not be induced to favour the popular belief in its poisonous character.
  2. The quality of being repugnant: (logical) opposition, contradiction, incompatibility.
    • 1559, William Cuningham, The Cosmographical Glasse‎[4], Book 2:
      For if the paralleles be of this nature, that howe muche the nearer we are th’equinoctiall, so muche the greater is the heate: and howe muche the furder remoued from th’equinoctiall, so muche the colder the qualitie of the aire is: there must seme a manifest repugnancie, betwixt Auicenne, & the Geographers.
    • 1710, George Berkeley, “Of the Principles of Human Knowledge”, in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. […], Dublin: […] Aaron Rhames, for Jeremy [i.e., Jeremiah] Pepyat, […], →OCLC, § 123, pages 175–176:
      […] this Notion is the Source from whence do ſpring, all thoſe Amuſing Geometrical Paradoxes, which have ſuch a direct Repugnancy to the plain, common Senſe of Mankind, and are admitted with ſo much Reluctance, into a Mind not yet debauched by Learning: […]
    • 1773, William Hazlitt, An Essay on the Justice of God‎[5], London: J. Johnson, page 16:
      The first man, Adam, experienced no kind of repugnancy between the divine justice and the divine mercy.
  3. (archaic) Resistance, fighting back.

See also

References

  1. ^ “repugnancīe, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “repugnancy, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
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