repress
/ɹəˈpɹɛs/
repress verb: to forcefully prevent an upheaval from developing further.
Verb (1)
repress (third-person singular simple present represses, present participle repressing, simple past and past participle repressed)
- To forcefully prevent an upheaval from developing further.
- to repress rebellion or sedition
- to repress the first risings of discontent
- To check; to keep back.
- Deſire of wine and all delicious drinks […] Thou couldſt repreſs,1671, John Milton, “The Second Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 37, lines 542–544
Verb (2)
repress (third-person singular simple present represses, present participle repressing, simple past and past participle repressed)
- To press again.
- to repress a vinyl record
- It had been a fraught car journey. From it my abiding memory is Charlie Troy having a deep but short-lived relationship with a smoking cigarette, rummaging after in the depthless depth of a shiny black handbag for a forbidden lipstick, finding it, applying it in Heaney’s mirror with a magician’s...2019, Niall Williams, This is Happiness, Bloomsbury (2020), pages 300-301
Noun
repress (plural represses)
- A record pressed again; a repressing.
- Save for the shows he actually taped — Dylan, Springsteen, Page & Plant and other kindred spirits — his own titles by 1994 were just represses of hard-to-find Japanese or American titles.2010, Clinton Heylin, Bootleg! The Rise And Fall Of The Secret Recording Industry
repress meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
repress in Tamil
- to repress, restrain
- இறுக்கு iṟukku
repress in Urdu
- دبانا, پابندی لگانا, روکنا
repress in Bengali
- দমন করা, চাপা দেওয়া
repress in Malayalam
- അടുക്കുക, അടിച്ചമർത്തുക, കീഴ്പ്പെടുത്തുക, മർദ്ദിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- repress in Kannada
- ಅದುಮಿಡು, ಅಂಕೆಯಲ್ಲಿಡು, ನಿಯಂತ್ರಿಸು, ನಿಗ್ರಹಿಸು
- repress in Persian
- سرکوفتن sarkuftan, سرکوب کردن sarkub kardan
- repress in Thai
- กลั้น glân, ระงับ rá-ngáp
- repress in Vietnamese
- đàn áp
Examples of repress in a sentence
- I don’t think I have anything to repress or hide from the world.
- He had always had to repress the urge to pinprick her enthusiasms.
- Repressing the urge to say, "I play the skinflute," I tell him I'm not in the band.
Synonyms of repress
29 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of repress
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | represses |
| present participle | repressing |
| past participle | repressed |
| past | repressed |
| Noun | |
| plural | represses |
Origin of repress
Ultimately from Latin repressus, the perfect passive participle of reprimō (“to repress”).
From re- + press.
Words formed from repress
Words that rhyme with repress
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- SMS
- success
- compress
- largesse
- ness
- profess
- confess
- distress
- regress
- depress
- excess
- guess
- prepossess
- undress
- CBS
- ingress
- oppress
- redress
- transgress
- assess
- cess
- duress
- fess
- fluoresce
- Hesse
- less
- mayoress
- obsess
- tress
- unless
- yes
- accresce
- acquiesce
- aggress
- BESS
- caress
- clothes press
- congress
- defervesce
- digress
- ess
- foulness
- Hess
- intumesce
- jess
- lazy S
- liquesce
- second-guess
Questions about repress
- What does repress mean?
- Repress means to forcefully prevent an upheaval from developing further.
- What is repress in Tamil?
- Repress in Tamil is இறுக்கு (iṟukku). See Repress meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is repress?
- Repress can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce repress?
- Repress is pronounced /ɹəˈpɹɛs/.
- What is the past tense of repress?
- The past tense of repress is repressed.
Words near repress in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: repress (page history and authors); இறுக்கு (Tamil) (page history and authors); repress (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repress (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repress (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repress (Kannada 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-repress.wav.
Cite this entry: “repress.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/repress. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.