Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use repression in a sentence

34 example sentences · noun

Repression means the act of repressing; state of being repressed. Example: “History shows that when governments fear the truth and increase repression, their days are limited.”

Examples of repression by meaning

nounThe act of repressing; state of being repressed.

  • History shows that when governments fear the truth and increase repression, their days are limited.
  • The most powerful educative force in the new society was, however, the system of police repression.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume III: The Breakdown, Oxford: Clarendon...

More sentences with repression

  • Mussolini was a fascist well known for his repression of criticism and totalitarian government.From the entry fascist
  • History shows that attempts to suppress dissent through indiscriminate repression have precisely the opposite effect.2023 January 19, Stephen Reicher, “More conflict, more violence: that’s the future if the UK’s new anti-protest law is passed”, in The…. From the entry radicalise
  • In the hands of the few power can be called oppression, repression, exploitation or authoritarianism.2011, Tim Gee, Counterpower, page 17. From the entry counterpower
  • Many Gazans scorn Fatah as corrupt and incompetent, and they dislike Hamas's overzealousness and repression.2009 January 8, Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Gaza Boomerang”, in The New York Times. From the entry incompetent
  • This example has led to legal, systematic repression of artificial intelligences in galactic society.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Geth Codex entry. From the entry exterminate
  • Later, her life was the tale of warfare, flight, repression, and odds.2008 March 11, Elizabeth Kiem, “Alla Bayanova on the Arbat”, in The Morning News, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2026. From the entry Scarlet O'Hara
  • The repression at Tiananmen Square dealt a serious but not fatal blow to the pro-democracy movement.1992, Richard Nixon, “The Pacific Triangle”, in Seize the Moment, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 179. From the entry dormant
  • At heart The Devil's Playground is about repression vs. personal integrity and freedom.1982 February 13, Michael Bronski, “Boys from Catholic School”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 12. From the entry erotophobia
  • The danger for the US is that financial repression, pursued on a large scale, would create a zombie economy.2025 October 13, Allison Schrager, “A Zombie Economy Could Be America's Future”, in Bloomberg Opinion, archived from the original on 13…. From the entry QE
  • Through Moreau's character, Wells exposes the repression inherent in an Enlightenment project of transcendence that attempted to de-animalize the human subject.2001, Carrie L. Rohman, Stalking the Subject, page 66. From the entry de-animalize
  • The vicious cycle of repression was upgeared and intensified.1987, Jasawanta Siṅgha Kam̆wala, The Other Zafarnamah. From the entry upgear
  • This study started from the assumption that warfare and repression are the main immediate causes of Third World refugeeism.1986, Marianne Stenius, Commentationes Scientiarum Socialium, numbers 31-34, page 81. From the entry refugeeism
  • The structural theory doesn't only focus on the negations, repressions, disavowals, and deadenings of the ego in the face of its encounters within and without.2012, Daniel Sapen, Freud's Lost Chord: Discovering Jazz in the Resonant Psyche, page 38. From the entry deadening
  • In 19th-century Japan, as well as in Germany, industrializers sought to avert the socialist inclinations of working classes by resorting to extreme repression or paternalism.2007 January 7, Stephen Kotkin, “Japan’s Retooling Is Distinctly Japanese”, in New York Times. From the entry industrializer
  • Every time freedom has failed in Europe, it is to that tradition - of violent repression, totalitarianism, xenophobia, and intolerance - that Europeans have reverted.2004 December 15, Emanuele Ottolenghi, “Illiberal Europe”, in The Jerusalem Post, →ISSN. From the entry illiberal
  • After years of brutal repression, any member of Saddam's palace guard stands to be strung up from the nearest lamppost by a vengeful Iraqi populace.2003 February 17, J. Barry, E. Thomas, “Boots, Bytes and Bombs”, in Newsweek. From the entry string up
  • In fact, the only females in the novel who do not practice extreme repression in one form or another are presexual girls.2002, Anna Krugovoy Silver, Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body, page 92. From the entry presexual
  • To equate the Gileadean repression of Offred's voice with Pieixoto's reconstruction of it is to narrow the set of possible meanings too much.1998, John Whalen-Bridge, Political Fiction and the American Self, page 180. From the entry Gileadean
  • The concepts of cryptonymy and preservative repression (the latter discussed directly below) stipulate the collapse of the revelatory properties of the symptom and language.1994, Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, Nicholas Thomas Rand, The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, →ISBN. From the entry cryptonymy
  • If governments overact and become oppressive, the terrorists will have won, for their theory is that repression will eventually lead to revolution.1989, Susheela Bhan, Terrorism: an Annotated Bibliography, page 116. From the entry the terrorists will have won
  • We can no longer speak glibly of revolution in an era when war could bring on the superultimate repression: death of the human race.1972, Otto Rank Association, Otto Rank, Journal Volumes 7-8, page 99. From the entry superultimate
  • It will be tempting for the US and Europe to engage in some financial repression in the coming years, using various means to force interest rates lower.2025 October 13, Allison Schrager, “A Zombie Economy Could Be America's Future”, in Bloomberg Opinion, archived from the original on 13…. From the entry QE
  • Beijing’s reshuffle of officials in Xingjiang might herald a hardening of repression against Uighurs, an academic at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research said.2021 November 21, Wu Su-wei, Jonathan Chin, “Uighurs could face more repression under new leaders”, in Taipei Times, archived from the…. From the entry Xingjiang
  • Its operations are centered on Hotan, an area of Xinjiang considered backward by the Communist Party and where the repression has been among the most severe.2019 November 28, Anna Fifield, “TikTok’s owner is helping China’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds”, in Washington Post…. From the entry Hotan
  • Just as the erotic imagination projects its antitype through an act of repression, Shelley's rhetoric begins in a negative gesture, banishing the truth of the origin's textualization.2014, William A. Ulmer, Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of Romantic Love, →ISBN, page 18. From the entry antitype
  • In contradistinction to this view, Abraham and Torok's theory of cryptonymy construes the bar or sign of repression as an object of investigation that gives itself to be read.2014, Esther Rashkin, Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative, →ISBN, page 37. From the entry cryptonymy
  • Maltose syrups, obtained by -amylase action on starch liquefacts, are suitable in fermentations, where a glucose repression effect is active, as is the case in several antibiotic fermentations.2009, Poonam Singh-Nee Nigam, Ashok Pandey, Biotechnology for Agro-Industrial Residues Utilisation, page 7. From the entry liquefact
  • Any criticism of the Soviet Union’s internal aggression or external repression was met with a 'what about?' some crime of the West, from slavery to the Monroe doctrine.2008 December 11, Staff writer, “The West is in danger of losing its moral authority”, in European Voice, retrieved 03 Jul 2017. From the entry whataboutism
  • Catherine had a paperback called Graphology: The Mind in the Hand, which gave her all sorts of warnings about people’s tendencies and repressions (“Artist or Madman?” “Pet or Brute?”).2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 1, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN. From the entry ascender
  • The image of the Nigerian police became worse during the military era as the force became a ready tool of repression for incessive repressive military regimes.2004, Okon Edet Uya, Education for sustainable democracy: the Nigerian experience. From the entry incessive
  • He wrote about us as if we were all Prometheuses in noble deathlock with the forces of repression in a battle for the soul of man.1983, Kent Forrester, Jerry A. Herndon, The Freshman Reader: Essays and Casebook, →ISBN, page 193. From the entry deathlock
  • Instinctual suppression and repression has only a bearing on the mass - psyche of the individual in so far as his actual individuity is affected by it.1945, Samuel Lowy, New Directions in Psychology. From the entry individuity

Meaning of repression

  1. noun The act of repressing; state of being repressed.
  2. noun The involuntary rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses.

Full definition of repression

Questions about repression in a sentence

How do you use repression in a sentence?
Repression is used as a noun. For example: “History shows that when governments fear the truth and increase repression, their days are limited.”
What is a short sentence with repression?
“The vicious cycle of repression was upgeared and intensified.”
What does repression mean?
Repression means the act of repressing; state of being repressed.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: repression (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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