repugnancy

repugnancy

English

Etymology

repugnant +‎ -cy

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈpʌɡnənsi/

Noun

repugnancy (countable and uncountable, plural repugnancies)

1. The quality of being repugnant: offensiveness, repulsion.
   • 1644, Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, London: John Field, Quest. VIII, p. 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, The Gentlewomans Companion, London: Dorman Newman, “Some choice Observations for a Gentlewomans Behaviour at Table,” p. 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, Our Reptiles and Batrachians, London: W.H. Allen, “The Common Toad,” p. 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, 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, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, pp. 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, London: J. Johnson, p. 16,

     The first man, Adam, experienced no kind of repugnancy between the divine justice and the divine mercy.

3. (archaic) Resistance, fighting back.
   • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene v]:

     Why do fond men expose themselves to battle,
     And not endure all threats? sleep upon’t,
     And let the foes quietly cut their throats,
     Without repugnancy?

See also

repugnance