Sample sentences for REPRESS - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

to hold something back

or:

to subjugate (oppress or hold others down)

In psychology, repress has a more specialized meaning where something is put out of one's consciousness. For example, someone with repressed anger may not consciously realize they are angry, yet the anger still affects their mind and body.

She could barely repress a smile as she scolded her son for fidgeting.

repress = to hold something back

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Harry S Truman

(editor's note: The suffix "-ive" converts a word into an adjective; though over time, what was originally an adjective often comes to be used as a noun. The adjective pattern means tending to and is seen in words like attractive, impressive, and supportive. Examples of the noun include narrative, alternative, and detective.)

At length he could repress his feelings no longer.
Scott, Walter -- Ivanhoe
said Mary, her eyes filling with tears, and a little sob rising which she tried to repress.
Eliot, George -- Middlemarch
She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to her.
Tolstoy, Leo -- Anna Karenina
On recognizing her step-mother, Valentine could not repress a shudder, which caused a vibration in the bed.
Dumas, Alexandre -- The Count of Monte Cristo
It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom.
Arthur Miller -- The Crucible

repressions = uses of force to suppress unpopular ideas

This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love.
George Orwell -- 1984

repression = using force to control people or ideas

(editor's note: The suffix "-sion", converts a verb into a noun that denotes the action or result of the verb. Typically, there is a slight change in the ending of the root verb, as in admission from admit, discussion from discuss, and invasion from invade.)

Freud believed that the dream was a "disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish."
Jostein Gaarder -- Sophie's World

repressed = something held back

...laughing ... They tried at first to repress it, but Aslan said:
C.S. Lewis -- The Magician's Nephew

repress = not permit it

If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Letter from a Birmingham Jail

repressed = held back

The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression.
John Steinbeck -- The Grapes of Wrath

repression = subjugation (oppressing or holding others down)

The rage adrenaline is flooding my arms and legs, stiff with repressed energy.
Katherine Applegate -- Everworld - Search For Senna

repressed = held back

It's got to be written now before John and I mature and repress the whole thing.
Paul Zindel -- The Pigman

repress = put out of our conscious memory (the memory of which we are aware)

Most often jovial, she has developed an iron repression of her exceptions to WILLY'S behavior
Arthur Miller -- Death of a Salesman

repression = to hold something back

The Reardan kids were so worried about grades and sports and THEIR FUTURES that they sometimes acted like repressed middle-aged business dudes with cell phones stuck in their small intestines.
Sherman Alexie -- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

repressed = holding back

Mama Elena threw her a look that seemed to Tita to contain all the years of repression that had flowed over the family, and said: "If he intends to ask for your hand, tell him not to bother. He'll be wasting his time and mine too. You know perfectly well that being the youngest daughter means you have to take care of me until the day I die."
Laura Esquivel -- Like Water for Chocolate

repression = subjugation (oppression that holds others down)

The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression.
Arthur Miller -- The Crucible

repression = use of force to suppress unpopular ideas or people

Evidently the time came in New England when the repressions of order were heavier than seemed warranted by the dangers against which the order was organized.
Arthur Miller -- The Crucible

repressions = uses of force to suppress unpopular ideas or people

Philip, younger and more frivolous, could not repress a smile, which flattered Mazarin as an applause of his pleasantry.
Dumas, Alexandre -- Ten Years Later

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