Word.ws English Dictionary

apotreptic

apotreptic adjective: designed to dissuade.

Adjective

apotreptic (comparative more apotreptic, superlative most apotreptic)

  1. Designed to dissuade.
    • The original sacrifice of the lamb in the land of Egypt was chiefly designed...to avert that judgement (viz. the death of the first-born) from the Israelites...but the annual passover...was rather a commemoration of the deliverance of the Israelites from that calamity, than an apotreptic sacrifice.1724, John Johnson, A Discourse on the Unbloody Sacrifice, and Altar, Unvailed and Supported, in which the nature of the Eucharist is explained...[full title runs to about 150 words], Robert...
    • The story of Prometheus provides the introduction to the protreptic part of the poem (the exhortation to work), the story of the world-periods introduces the apotreptic part (the admonition to avoid wrongdoing).1985, W. J. (Willem Jacob) Verdenius, A Commentary on Hesiod: Works and Days, VV. 1-382, E. J. Brill, page 76

Noun

apotreptic (plural apotreptics)

  1. Rhetoric designed to dissuade.
    • The sweeping mock-Catonian attack of Juv. 6, an apotreptic against marriage that quickly turns into a categorical disparagement of women.2001, Kirk Freudenburg, Satires of Rome: threatening poses from Lucilius to Juvenal, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 253
    • Each category [of rhetoric] is sub-divided: symbouliutic into protreptic and apotreptic, dicanic into prosecution and defence..., and epideictic into praise and blame or dispraise.2001, Niall Livingstone, A Commentary on Isocrates' Busiris, E. J. Brill,, →ISBN, page 9

Forms of apotreptic

Adjective
comparativemore apotreptic
superlativemost apotreptic
Noun
pluralapotreptics

Questions about apotreptic

What does apotreptic mean?
Apotreptic means designed to dissuade.
What part of speech is apotreptic?
Apotreptic can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near apotreptic in the dictionary

  1. apotopes
  2. apotracheal
  3. apotransaminase
  4. apotransaminases
  5. apotransferrin
  6. apotreptic
  7. apotreptics
  8. apotropaia
  9. apotropaic
  10. apotropaic eye
  11. apotropaically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apotreptic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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