Repulsion

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɹɪˈpʌlʃən/

Definitions

1. A strong feeling of disgust or aversion that causes someone to want to move away or reject something
2. An intense feeling of distaste or unwillingness that drives one to avoid something ; a physical force that acts to repel objects or particles from each other
3. A powerful emotion of revulsion or unpleasantness causing avoidance or rejection ; a natural force existing between entities that causes them to move apart

Etymology: Latin "repellere" meant "to drive back," and its past participle "repulsus" gave rise to "repulsio," a noun for the act of pushing away. That physical sense, a thing being shoved back from another, is the original core of the word, and it passed through Middle French "répulsion" into English. Only later did the word take on the emotional sense of a strong aversion. The move from force to feeling follows a familiar pattern: the idea of being pushed away by a physical object became a metaphor for being pushed away by a person or thing you find intolerable. English speakers used the word in the older physical sense for centuries before the disgust meaning became dominant, and in physics the term still names the force that drives like charges apart.

Synonyms: aversion, disgust, repugnance

Antonyms: attraction, affection, love