disattract

English

Etymology

From dis- +‎ attract.

Verb

disattract (third-person singular simple present disattracts, present participle disattracting, simple past and past participle disattracted)

1. Synonym of repel.
   • 1844 September 1, “Protheic Scripture”, in The New Age, Concordium Gazette, and Temperance Advocate, volume I, number 21, London: […] W. Strange, […], published 1845, page 279:

     Man’s spirit, severing, draws after it a third of finite spirits; his soul disparting, leads astray a third of wandering souls; his body, disuniting, attracts a third of disattracting bodies.

   • 1909 February, Fred L. Schwartz, “[News & Views] A Proletarian Movement”, in The International Socialist Review: A Monthly Journal of International Socialist Thought, volume IX, number 8, Chicago, Ill.: Charles H[ope] Kerr & Company, pages 627–628:

     Some “Socialists” say a “millionaire or a preacher joining the party attracts the attention of other people who might otherwise be hostile to it.” Socialism if it is anything is a revolutionary force and not a side-show “attraction” and people that can be attracted by little tin gods can also be disattracted by the same process.

   • 1942 August 19, Chapin Hall, “What Goes On?”, in Los Angeles Times, volume LXI, Los Angeles, Calif., part I (General News), page 9, column 1:

     That is the use to which advertisers put the air medium; the usefulness and profitable return of which are seriously impaired by the lack of psychological understanding by many of its customers who spend a great deal of money in utilizing it to exploit their wares and to dis-attract business.

   • 1955 July 8, William Worthy, “Red Bid to Negro PWs Muffed”, in The Christian Science Monitor, volume 47, number 188, Boston, Mass.: Christian Science Publishing Society, page 12, column 7:

     It may not redound to the intellectual and spiritual credit of the Negro PWs, but the attraction of the gadgets and output of American industry acted at the same time “disattract” them from the primitive standard of living In China and North Korea.

   • 1968 January–February, Edward J. O’Donnell, “A place to go and a place to be from…: The Neighborhood Service Center”, in Ruth C. Galaid, editor, Welfare in Review, volume 6, number 1, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, page 18, column 2:

     Further, the specification of one target group in one target area inevitably disattracts other potentially needful groups.

   • 1974, Timothy L[auro] S[quire] Sprigge, “[Santayana’s Ethical Theory] Reason”, in Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy (The Arguments of the Philosophers), London; Boston, Mass.: Routledge & Kegan Paul, →ISBN, page 208:

     Yet Santayana’s insistence that one envisages things sub specie boni or mali whenever one is attracted or disattracted by them serves to remind us of something too often forgotten by moralists, namely that when moral terms are used sincerely they point to an immediately felt value in envisaged situations which is equally present when these are such as the social nature of language makes it hard for us to describe as good or evil, as (for example) when they are such as satisfy or frustrate impulses which are frankly vindictive.

   • 1976 June 8–9, John Searle, “Mind and Language”, in W. J[ames] Megaw, editor, Prospects for Man: Communication, Toronto, Ont.: The Centre for Research on Environmental Quality, Faculty of Science, York University, published 1978, →ISBN, page 57:

     Take statement making; there is an elaborate system about statement making. It is called scientific methodology or epistemology or a lot of different names. Under what conditions are you justified in making a statement? How do you verify a statement once it is made? I see no way of accounting for that in terms of notions like attraction and repulsion. You can say, “Well, I am attracted to the confirming evidence and disattracted to the disconfirming evidence.”

   • 1977, Sung Hoon Kim, Don Min Kim, “Korea”, in Douglas Ensminger, editor, Food Enough or Starvation for Millions, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd., part I (Six Country Case Studies), page 139:

     The rural income has been increased and the urbanization side-effects such as population, layoff, inflation, slum, disattract rural people.

   • 1988 February 25, Sam[my] L[awrence] Cureatz, quotee, Annual Report, Provincial Auditor, 1986-87: Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Toronto, Ont., page 26:

     I can think of situations where you are trying to move the inventory on, say, a large highway. You are trying to attract that kind of person. People are going to the cottage, possibly, up and down the highway, and you are trying to get them off the road so you can move your inventory. Of course, moving that store to attract that kind of business disattracts business from the local community.

   • 1999, Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield, “Labor Migration, Family Integration, and the New America”, in David W. Haines, Karen E. Rosenblum, editors, Illegal Immigration in America: A Reference Handbook, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, part I (Concepts, Policies, and Numbers), page 15:

     For many located in central cities, the notion of economic migration is distant, despite economic theories of the nation as a marketplace with locales alternately attracting and disattracting workers.

   • 2000, Edward J. Tejirian, quoting Alex, “Emotional Paths”, in Male to Male: Sexual Feelings Across the Boundaries of Identity (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies), New York, N.Y.: Harrington Park Press, →ISBN, page 157:

     I can kid around with guys, joke, but I don’t feel that attraction, and even imagining it, imagining the attraction and thinking about being with a man as with a woman, I feel repelled, “disattracted.” […] Because when you asked, I could truly say that I feel attracted to myself. But it’s ironic, because I sincerely feel that I’m disattracted to another male. It’s a paradox.

   • 2007 November 24, “Unquotable Quotes”, in Saurav Sethia, editor, The Doon School Weekly, number 2172, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, page 2, column 2:

     I am getting disattracted. Rishab Nautiyal is repelled.

   • 2010, Frans Pennings, “Differences in the Organisation of Labour Relations and their Impact on the Social Dialogue: the Turkish and Dutch Cases”, in Talat Canbolat, editor, Prof. Dr. Ali Güzel’e Armağan: Essays in Honor of Prof. Dr. Ali Güzel (Marmara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi), volume I, Istanbul: Beta, →ISBN, page 654:

     Although at present this has become of much less interest, unions are still not seen as simply competitors in terms of wage claims but they still have different approaches, which attract or disattract workers.