Meaning & use
repress
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To keep an emotion or impulse inside and not let it show.
Grammar: Takes an object: she repressed a laugh.
Patterns
- repress a feeling
- repress an urge
He tried to repress a smile during the serious meeting.
She repressed her anger and answered calmly.
It is hard to repress a yawn in a long lecture.
verbtransitive
To use force or control to stop a group or its freedoms.
Grammar: Often used for governments: the regime repressed protesters.
Patterns
- repress a group
- repress a rebellion
The government repressed all opposition newspapers.
Troops were sent to repress the uprising.
Harsh laws repressed the freedom of the press.
verbtransitivetechnical
To push a painful memory out of conscious thought without meaning to.
Grammar: A psychology sense: the mind represses the memory.
Patterns
- repress a memory
Some psychologists believe the mind can repress a traumatic memory.
She had repressed the incident for years.
He seemed to repress any thought of the accident.
Word forms
| third person singular | represses |
|---|---|
| past tense | repressed |
| past participle | repressed |
| -ing form | repressing |
Common combinations
- repress emotions
- People who repress emotions may feel exhausted.
- repress a smile
- The teacher struggled to repress a smile.
- repress dissent
- The regime tried to repress dissent.
- repress a memory
- He may have repressed the memory as a child.
- repress an urge
- She repressed the urge to interrupt.
Synonyms and how they differ
- suppress
- Suppress is close in meaning but suggests stopping something outright, while repress suggests pushing it down where it may remain.
- restrain
- Restrain focuses on holding back physically or by control, with no hint of buried feeling.
- stifle
- Stifle suggests smothering a sound or action as it starts, such as a yawn.
- bottle up
- Bottle up is an informal way of describing feelings held in rather than shared.
Opposites
Word family
- repression noun
- the act of holding back or controlling
- repressed adjective
- holding back emotions
- repressive adjective
- using harsh control over people
- repressor noun
- one who or that which represses
Commonly confused: repress or suppress?
repress vs suppress
Suppress usually means to end or stop something on purpose, while repress is more often unconscious or about emotions.
Practice
The government used troops to ___ the protests.
Choose one answer.
Repress means to hold down by force. Express means to show, impress means to make a strong impression, and compress means to squeeze.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “repress”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.