repugnancy

English

Etymology

(deprecated template usage)

repugnant +‎ -cy

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,^[1]

     […] 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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     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,^[4]

     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, London: J. Johnson, p. 16,^[6]

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

3. (archaic) Resistance, fighting back.
   • c. 1607, William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act III, Scene 5,^[7]

     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