rebarbative

See also: rébarbative

English

WOTD – 26 December 2012

WOTD – 26 December 2014

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] French rébarbatif, rébarbative (“repellent”, “disagreeable”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle French rebarber (“to oppose”, “to stand up to”) (from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French re- + barbe (“barb”, “beard”) (from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin barba (“beard”), literally “to stand beard to beard against”) + -atif (“-ative”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: rĭbärʹbətĭv, IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈbɑːbətɪv/
• enPR: rĭbärʹbətĭv, IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈbɑɹbətɪv/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adjective

rebarbative (comparative more rebarbative, superlative most rebarbative)

1. Irritating, repellent.
   • 1991, Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450—1800, 1994 paperback edition, page 42,

     Poliziano took great pleasure in incorporating the new myths, facts, and variant readings he uncovered as a scholar in his own Latin poems and letters — and in pointing out that he had done so in his most rebarbative technical monographs.

   • 2009 August 31, Nicholas Lezard, Down and out in London (column), New Statesman, page 54,

     I know there are few things more rebarbative than parents who insist, usually against all the evidence, that their children are the bees’ knees, but something seems to have turned out fine.

   • 2011, David Marquand, The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe, page 31,

     They wished to transcend it—an astounding political innovation whose inner meaning has been so swathed in rebarbative academic jargon and even more rebarbative officialese that only a tiny minority of the Union′s citizens understand how it works.

Derived terms

• rebarbatively

• rebarbativeness

• rebarbativity

Translations

repellent

• Czech: odpudivý, odporný (cs)
• Dutch: weerzinwekkend (nl)
• Finnish: luotaantyöntävä
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: abstoßend (de)
• Russian: отта́лкивающий (ru) m (ottálkivajuščij)

References

• “rebarbative, adj.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (draft revision, June 2009)
• “reˈbarbative, a.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)

Anagrams

• abbreviater