antipathy
Americannoun
-
a natural, basic, or habitual repugnance; aversion.
- Synonyms:
- hatred, detestation, abhorrence, disgust
- Antonyms:
- attraction
-
an instinctive contrariety or opposition in feeling.
-
an object of natural aversion or habitual dislike.
noun
-
a feeling of intense aversion, dislike, or hostility
-
the object of such a feeling
Synonym Usage
See aversion.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of antipathy
1595–1605; < Latin antipathīa < Greek antipátheia. See anti-, -pathy
Explanation
An antipathy is a deep-seated dislike of something or someone. Usually it's a condition that is long-term, innate, and pretty unlikely to change — like your antipathy for the Red Sox. If you look at the Greek roots of this word — anti- ("against") and pathos ("feeling") — you can see that antipathy is a feeling against someone or something. In general, antipathies are feelings that are kept at least somewhat under wraps and are not out in the open.
Vocabulary lists containing antipathy
Power Prefix: Anti
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "A"
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Common Senses: Path ("Feeling")
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Antipathy remains lower than in 1983, during a particularly frosty period in the Cold War in President Ronald Reagan’s first term, when as many as 63 percent saw Russia as an enemy.
From Washington Post • Feb. 25, 2022
Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 1800s, and flared up again after wolf populations rebounded under federal protection.
From Washington Times • Mar. 7, 2021
Antipathy has reached especial heights in Venice, which last month erected barriers in an attempt to control crowds.
From The Guardian • Jun. 25, 2018
Antipathy toward him runs so deep that one recent poll found that 45% of Peruvians wouldn’t vote for his daughter under any circumstance.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 9, 2016
Antipathy towards England, nevertheless, kept Catherine I. aloof from the Hanoverian league; she made alliance with the emperor.
From A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6 by Black, Robert
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
