English

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Etymology 1

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Ultimately from Latin repressus, the perfect passive participle of reprimō (I repress).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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repress (third-person singular simple present represses, present participle repressing, simple past and past participle repressed)

  1. (transitive) To forcefully prevent an upheaval from developing further.
    Synonyms: crush, put down, quell, subdue, suppress
    to repress rebellion or sedition
    to repress the first risings of discontent
  2. (transitive, by extension) To check; to keep back.
    Synonyms: restrain, hold back; see also Thesaurus:curb
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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From re-press.

Verb

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repress (third-person singular simple present represses, present participle repressing, simple past and past participle repressed)

  1. To press again.
    to repress a vinyl record
    • 2019, Niall Williams, This is Happiness, Bloomsbury (2020), pages 300-301:
      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 dexterity that defied the inconsistencies of the road, pressing, unpressing, and repressing her lips until the look came to her satisfaction and the bow was drawn.
Translations
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Noun

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repress (plural represses)

  1. A record pressed again; a repressing.
    • 2010, Clinton Heylin, Bootleg! The Rise And Fall Of The Secret Recording Industry:
      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.
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Anagrams

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