revulsion
/rɪˈvʌlʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun]
1A sense of disgust and loathing: news of the attack will be met with sorrow and revulsion...
- Now defendants in criminal cases often are charged with offences which would fill ordinary people with horror, disgust and revulsion.
- If labelling is to be effective, it is important that embarrassment, revulsion and even disgust be generated in the public mind.
- Gripped by a sense of revulsion at the ongoing murder campaign, several thousand heeded his call and took to the street outside City Hall.
Synonyms
disgust, repulsion, abhorrence, repugnance, nausea, loathing, horror, hatred, detestation, aversion, abomination, distaste, antipathy, dislike, contempt, odium
informal yuck factor
archaic disrelish
rare repellency, repellence
2 Medicine, chiefly historical The drawing of disease or blood congestion from one part of the body to another, e.g. by counterirritation.From observing the extraordinary cures effected by the aid of revulsion medical men have been borne away too much by an attachment to this mode of treatment.
Derivatives
revulsive
- Last week he explained that ‘by promoting the WTO's agenda, these 142 nations can counter the revulsive destructionism of terrorism.’
- If nothing else, give him credit for knowing how turn a perfectly nice blues-rock dance party into revulsive sex-drug splooge.
- The intrusion of spoken words and emotion into the supreme place of privacy - the sanctuary of the mind - is deemed wholly revulsive to them.
Origin
Mid 16th century (in sense 2): from French, or from Latin revulsio(n-), from revuls- 'torn out', from the verb revellere (from re- 'back' + vellere 'pull'). sense 1 dates from the early 19th century.