Word.ws English Dictionary

repellent

/ɹəˈpɛlənt/US/ɹəˈpɛlənt/

repellent adjective: repulsive, inspiring aversion.

Adjective

repellent (comparative more repellent, superlative most repellent)

  1. Repulsive, inspiring aversion.
    • The mixture of whey, beetroot juice, and spirulina seems repellent to me.
    • People are rightly and justifiably terrified with our culture. Many aspects of it are destructive and repellant.1978 December 23, Michael Bronski, “Notes and Thoughts by One Gay Man on Pornography and Censorship”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 22, page 11
    Synonyms:
    aversive
  2. Resistant or impervious to something.
    • All that fabric's supposed to be dust-repellent.
  3. (archaic) Tending or able to repel; driving back.
    • These particles exercise a-highly repellent force.

Noun

repellent (plural repellents)

  1. A substance or solution used to repel insects, dangerous animals, or other pests.
    • None of the mosquito repellents we've tried work.
    • The most successful form of shark repellent, according to US Naval Research Laboratory tests, was a combination of copper acetate and a dark nigrosine dye, and cakes of this mixture were apparently now attached to the Mae Wests of all the US Armed Forces.1954, Ian Fleming, “Beau Desert”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 192
  2. A substance or treatment for a fabric etc to make it impervious to something.
    • They applied dirt repellent to the sports car.
  3. (broadly, obsolete) Someone or something that repels.

repellent meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

repellent in Tamil

வெறுப்பூட்டி, விரட்டி, பூச்சிவிரட்டி

repellent in Urdu

اجیرن

repellent in Malayalam

കീടങ്ങളെ അകറ്റുന്ന രാസദ്രവ്യം, തിരിച്ചോടിക്കുന്ന രാസവസ്തു

Examples of repellent in a sentence

  • Binding a repellent at these receptors is believed to cause increased autophosphorylating activity of the CheA kinase.
  • McCarthy and asked why he had written a book about such a repellent character, he was glib.
  • He had becoms full of Bay intelligence about mosquito repellent measures.

All 20 example sentences with repellent

Synonyms of repellent

Forms of repellent

Adjective
comparativemore repellent
superlativemost repellent
alternative formrepellant
Noun
pluralrepellents

Origin of repellent

From Latin repellēns. Equivalent to repel + -ent.

Words formed from repellent

Questions about repellent

What does repellent mean?
Repellent means repulsive, inspiring aversion.
What is repellent in Tamil?
Repellent in Tamil is வெறுப்பூட்டி, விரட்டி, பூச்சிவிரட்டி. See Repellent meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is repellent?
Repellent can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce repellent?
Repellent is pronounced /ɹəˈpɛlənt/ (UK).

Words near repellent in the dictionary

  1. repelled
  2. repellence
  3. repellences
  4. repellencies
  5. repellency
  6. repellent
  7. repellently
  8. repellents
  9. repeller
  10. repellers
  11. repellest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: repellent (page history and authors); repellent (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repellent (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repellent (Malayalam 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-repellent.wav.

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