repudiate
/rɪˈpjuːdɪeɪt
/verb [with object]
1Refuse to accept; reject: she has repudiated policies associated with previous party leaders...
- Rejecting a constricting southern ethos, Florence flees to Harlem and marries Frank, a hard-drinking blues singer; subsequently, she repudiates him for rejecting her middle-class American values.
- He continued to argue against the King's divorce and the split with Rome, and in 1534 was arrested after refusing to swear an Oath of Succession repudiating the Pope and accepting the annulment of the marriage to Catherine.
- It's believed that the insurance companies sought to repudiate their policies partly on the basis that the Department had failed to disclose details of penalties imposed prior to 1992.
Synonyms
reject, renounce, abandon, forswear, give up, turn one's back on, have nothing more to do with, wash one's hands of, have no more truck with, abjure, disavow, recant, desert, discard, disown, cast off, lay aside, cut off, rebuff
archaic forsake
rare disprofess
1.1chiefly Law Refuse to fulfil or discharge (an agreement, obligation, or debt): breach of a condition gives the other party the right to repudiate a contract...
- This leads to the possibility of the US repudiating its existing debt obligations to external creditors.
- I would advocate going on to repudiate the entire debt outright, and let the chips fall where they may.
- When things went poorly for the Spanish, they just repudiated their debts and started over.
Synonyms
cancel, set aside, revoke, rescind, reverse, retract, overrule, override, overturn, invalidate, nullify, declare null and void, abrogate;
refuse to fulfil, disregard, ignore, disobey, dishonour, renege on, go back on, backtrack on;
Law disaffirm, avoid, vacate
1.2(In the past or in non-Christian religions) disown or divorce (one’s wife): Philip was excommunicated in 1095 because he had repudiated his wife...
- Only the husband may repudiate his spouse, although the wife may provoke him to make that decision.
- As caput mansi or head of the household, the husband of the mother of the twin boys, should he choose to repudiate his wife, would be following a convention deemed appropriate to protect the social order with respect to unfaithful wives.
- The building reminded them of a past that belonged to them and their ancestors, a past they did not wish to repudiate.
Synonyms
divorce, end one's marriage to
2Deny the truth or validity of: the minister repudiated allegations of human rights abuses...
- Carteret's wife Olivia, for her part, is determined to repudiate the legal and moral claims of her mulatto half-sister - Janet Miller - on their father's estate.
Synonyms
deny, refute, contradict, rebut, dispute, disclaim, disavow;
dismiss, brush aside
formal gainsay
rare controvert, negate
Derivatives
repudiator
- The effect of a repudiation upon the repudiator's right to arbitration is contingent on the character of the alleged repudiation and the reasons offered in justification.
- A determination on the issue of repudiation will often entail an examination of the repudiator's manifest intent to preserve a pre-existing contractual right to arbitrate as an alternative to contractual repudiation.
Origin
Late Middle English (originally an adjective in the sense 'divorced'): from Latin repudiatus 'divorced, cast off', from repudium 'divorce'.