repugnancy

English

Etymology

From 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^[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, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, pp. 175-176,^[5]

     […] 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^[6], 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.
   • 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, [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