Word.ws English Dictionary

rebarbative

UK/ɹɪˈbɑːbətɪv//ɹɪˈbɑɹbətɪv/

rebarbative adjective: irritating, repellent.

Adjective

rebarbative (comparative more rebarbative, superlative most rebarbative)

  1. Irritating, repellent.
    • Poliziano took great pleasure in incorporating the new myths, facts, and variant readings he uncovered as a scholar in his own Latin poems and letters — and in pointing out that he had done so in his most rebarbative technical monographs.1991, Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450—1800, paperback edition, page 42
    • […]A mystery (1990), for instance, the first book he wrote after arriving in America, stunned critics; for some it was an ambitious and remarkable book, for others it was rebarbative and wilfully obscure.2001 May 12, Robert Potts, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

rebarbative meaning in Tamil

rebarbative in Tamil

அழகற்ற

Examples of rebarbative in a sentence

  • Central to the story was Steve Eisman, an eccentric and rebarbative hedge-funder who was one of the earliest to see through the subprime lies.2014 April 5, Alex Preston, “Flash Boys: Cracking the Money Code by Michael Lewis, review: Michael Lewis tells the compelling true story of...
  • Houellebecq doesn’t like experts[…]and rebarbative acronyms are the language that experts use to put the rest of us in our place.2024 October 24, Judith Shulevitz, “Michel Houellebecq Has Some Fresh Predictions. Be Afraid.”, in The Atlantic:

Forms of rebarbative

comparativemore rebarbative
superlativemost rebarbative

Origin of rebarbative

From French rébarbatif, rébarbative (“repellent, disagreeable”), from Middle French rebarber (“to oppose”), ultimately from Latin barba (“beard”), literally “to stand beard to beard against”.

Words formed from rebarbative

Questions about rebarbative

What does rebarbative mean?
Rebarbative means irritating, repellent.
What is rebarbative in Tamil?
Rebarbative in Tamil is அழகற்ற. See Rebarbative meaning in Tamil.
How do you use rebarbative in a sentence?
Central to the story was Steve Eisman, an eccentric and rebarbative hedge-funder who was one of the earliest to see through the subprime lies.
What part of speech is rebarbative?
Rebarbative is an adjective.
How do you pronounce rebarbative?
Rebarbative is pronounced /ɹɪˈbɑːbətɪv/ (UK).

Words near rebarbative in the dictionary

  1. rebarbarization
  2. rebarbarize
  3. rebarbarized
  4. rebarbarizes
  5. rebarbarizing
  6. rebarbative
  7. rebarbatively
  8. rebarbativeness
  9. rebargain
  10. rebargained
  11. rebargaining

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rebarbative (page history and authors); rebarbative (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-rebarbative.ogg.

Cite this entry: “rebarbative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rebarbative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.