repudiate

UK/ɹɪˈpjuː.di.eɪt/

repudiate verb: to reject the truth or validity of; to deny.

Verb

repudiate (third-person singular simple present repudiates, present participle repudiating, simple past and past participle repudiated)

(transitive) To reject the truth or validity of; to deny.
- The fierce willingness to repudiate domination in a holistic manner is the starting point for progressive cultural revolution.2012, Bell Hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations
Synonyms:

deny, contradict, gainsay, refudiate
(transitive) To refuse to have any relation to; to disown.
- It was not enough just to shoot the Old Bolsheviks; Stalin had to have the show trials. He had to demonstrate publicly that these men of enormous energy and spirit were so utterly broken as to openly repudiate themselves and all they had fought for.1976, Terrence Des Pres, “Excremental Assault”, in The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps, page 60
- I disagreed completely—and still do—with President Nixon's initiative to "normalize" relations with the People's Republic of China. The American people—against the will of the majority, if the polls are correct—have been forced to go along with the Carter administration's decision to repudiate our...1980, Spiro Agnew, Go Quietly . . . Or Else, New York: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN, page 34
Synonyms:

disavow, forswear
(transitive) To refuse to pay or honor (a debt).
- '[…] she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether […]'1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 34, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
Synonyms:

welsh

Antonyms:

requite
(intransitive) To be repudiated.

Adjective

repudiate (comparative more repudiate, superlative most repudiate)

(obsolete) Repudiated by a husband, divorced.
(obsolete) Repudiated after betrothal or engagement.
(obsolete, generally) Set aside, rejected.

Noun

repudiate (plural repudiates)

(obsolete) A divorced wife.

repudiate meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

repudiate in Malayalam

നിരാകരിക്കുക, ധിക്കരിക്കുക, ഉപേക്ഷിക്കുക

repudiate in Kannada

ಒಪ್ಪದಿರು, ಪತ್ತುಗೆ ಕಳೆ, ಬೆಂಬಲಿಸದಿರು, ತೆರಲು ಒಪ್ಪದಿರು, ತಿರಸ್ಕರಿಸು, ನಿರಾಕರಿಸು

More languagesFewer languages

repudiate in Arabic: تَبَرَّأَ tabarraʔa, رَفَضَ rafaḍa

Examples of repudiate in a sentence

Chaucer […] not only came to doubt the worth of his extraordinary body of work, but repudiated it.(Can we date this quote?), Joyce Carol Oates, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.1965, Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice:

All 17 example sentences with repudiate

Synonyms of repudiate

3 more synonymsFewer synonyms

renounce
wash one's hands of
forsay

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of repudiate

Forms of repudiate

Verb
third-person singular present	repudiates
present participle	repudiating
past participle	repudiated
past	repudiated
Adjective
comparative	more repudiate
superlative	most repudiate
Noun
plural	repudiates

Past tense of repudiate: repudiated

Origin of repudiate

First attested in 1543; from Latin repudiātus, the perfect passive participle of repudiō (“to cast off, reject”) (see -ate (etymology 1, 2 and 3)), from repudium (“rejection, repudiation, divorce”).

Words formed from repudiate

Questions about repudiate

What does repudiate mean?: Repudiate means to reject the truth or validity of; to deny.
What is repudiate in Tamil?: Repudiate in Tamil is உண்மையல்ல என மறு, மறுதலி. See Repudiate meaning in Tamil.
How do you use repudiate in a sentence?: Chaucer […] not only came to doubt the worth of his extraordinary body of work, but repudiated it.
What part of speech is repudiate?: Repudiate can be a verb, an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce repudiate?: Repudiate is pronounced /ɹɪˈpjuː.di.eɪt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of repudiate?: The past tense of repudiate is repudiated.

Words near repudiate in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: repudiate (page history and authors); repudiate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repudiate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repudiate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); repudiate (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: 2026-09-02

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

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