repose1
/rɪˈpəʊz
/noun [mass noun]
1A state of rest, sleep, or tranquillity: in repose her face looked relaxed...
- But those moments of rest and repose are important to feed the soul.
- It is desirable, at certain times of day or night, to look deeply at objects in repose: wheels that have run long dusty distances bearing great loads of vegetable or mineral, coal sacks, barrels, baskets, carpenters' hafts and helves.
- It is highly evocative, both in violent action and in repose.
Synonyms
rest, relaxation, inactivity, restfulness, stillness, idleness;
sleep, slumber
1.1The state of being calm and composed: he had lost none of his grace or his repose...
- It is not the social disaster which we hark back to, but the emotive response - the existential repose and quietude with which men confronted their impending doom.
- The beginning of the poem images the self's divisions as the body pulls the speaker's ascending thoughts down from a scene of repose, tranquillity and safety.
- The placid look of his countenance never changed for an instant; his whole frame rested, uncontrolled, in perfect stillness and repose; not a muscle was seen to twitch.
Synonyms
peace, peace and quiet, peacefulness, quiet, quietness, quietude, calm, calmness, tranquillity, stillness;
leisure, ease, respite, time off, breathing space
composure, calmness, serenity, tranquillity, equanimity, peace of mind;
poise, self-possession, aplomb, self-assurance, dignity
1.2 Art Harmonious arrangement of colours and forms, providing a restful visual effect: many of the qualities of the great Piero della Francescas—the sense of grand stasis, of timeless repose—seem strongly reincarnated in this work...
- But the dreamlike quality conveyed by Metaphysical painters differed from that of the Surrealists because of their concern with pictorial structure and a strongly architectural sense of repose deriving from Italian Renaissance art.
- The canvas is at once typical and atypical of the artist's expressionist manner, familiar in its emphatic and swelling interlocking forms, yet unexpectedly still and harmonious in its quality of repose.
- The trees, with their gently curving trunks, offer a sense of repose, while the references to art history establish Otnes's dialogue with the art before his own.
verb [no object, with adverbial of place]
1Be situated or kept in a particular place: the diamond now reposes in the Louvre...
- Its baptismal font (in which many of my ancestors' noggins were wetted) now reposes in a side-chapel of the nearby Johanneskirche.
- The other hotel we stayed at, the Shangri-La Rasa Ria, reposes among villages some 40 minutes from the airport.
- Literally in a backwater not far from The Hague, Delft reposes among the clefts made through the sleepy Dutch fields by the delta of the Rhine.
Synonyms
lie, be placed, be set, be situated, be positioned, be supported, rest
1.1Lie down in rest: how sweetly he would repose in the four-poster bed
Synonyms
lie, lie down, recline, stretch out;
rest, relax, sleep, slumber, take one's ease
literary couch
1.2 [with object] literary (repose something on/in) Lay something to rest in or on: I’ll go to him, and repose our distresses on his friendly bosom
Synonyms
put, place, lay, lodge, set, consign, invest, entrust
1.3 [with object] archaic Give rest to: he halted to repose his way-worn soldiers...
- Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, makes the night morning, and the noontide night.
- Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation.
- Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
Derivatives
reposeful
- The Buddhists, says this latest study, are happier than most of us because their religion encourages them to think with a different side of the brain, the peaceful, reposeful side as opposed to the angry bits which drive most of us.
- Far less reposeful is Andre Derain's Dance, where colours skirmish in an ultra-patterned, stage-set, Gauguinesque jungle.
- The reposeful haven where the Mahatma was stretching his tired limbs at the time is a quaint brick and wood building named Mani Bhawan.
reposefully
- When he went to the western front in December 1915, with every possibility of being killed, he wrote to Clementine, ‘My conviction that the greatest of my work is still to be done is strong within me, and I ride reposefully along the gale.’
- But even as a woman sits reposefully, I learned, there is the motion of thought and feeling within her that takes in all of reality.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French repos (noun), reposer (verb), from late Latin repausare, from re- (expressing intensive force) + pausare 'to pause'.
pause from Late Middle English:
Pause goes back to Greek pausis, from pausein ‘to stop’. This is the same root as repose (Late Middle English), and pose (ME as a verb, but only E19th as a noun). The French word poseur was adopted in the late 19th century. See also puzzle
repose2
/rɪˈpəʊz/verb [with object] (repose something in)
Place something, especially one’s confidence or trust, in: we have never betrayed the trust that you have reposed in us...
- I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy’.
- He refused to be dragged into unnecessary political controversy and instead reposed his trust in the discretion of his voters who all are celebrated writers drawn from 22 languages of India.
- just how little control you have over how other people will behave when you repose your trust in them!
Derivatives
reposal
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'put back in the same position'): from re- 'again' + the verb pose1, suggested by Latin reponere 'replace', from re- (expressing intensive force) + ponere 'to place'.