repeal
verb (used with object)
to revoke or withdraw formally or officially.
repeal
American
[ri-peel]
/ rɪˈpil /
verb (used with object)
-
repeals,
present (3rd person singular)
-
repealed,
past participle, past
-
repealing
present participle
-
to revoke or withdraw formally or officially.
to repeal a grant.
-
to revoke or annul (a law, tax, duty, etc.) by express legislative enactment; abrogate.
- Synonyms:
- invalidate, rescind, abolish, nullify
noun
repeal
1
British
/ rɪˈpiːl /
verb
-
to annul or rescind officially (something previously ordered); revoke
these laws were repealed
-
obsolete to call back (a person) from exile
noun
Repeal
2
British
/ rɪˈpiːl /
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
repealabilitynoun
-
repealablenessnoun
-
repealernoun
-
unrepealabilitynoun
-
nonrepealableadjective
-
repealableadjective
-
unrepealableadjective
-
unrepealedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
repealsimple
-
repealssimple
-
have repealedperfect
-
has repealedperfect
-
am repealingprogressive
-
are repealingprogressive
-
is repealingprogressive
-
have been repealingperfect progressive
-
has been repealingperfect progressive
Past
-
repealedsimple
-
had repealedperfect
-
was repealingprogressive
-
were repealingprogressive
-
had been repealingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of repeal
1275–1325; Middle English repelen < Anglo-French repeler, equivalent to re- re- + ( a ) peler to appeal
Explanation
To repeal something — usually a law, ordinance or public policy — is to take it back. For example, dog lovers might want the town council to repeal the law that says residents can have no more than four dogs. The verb repeal comes from the Anglo-French word repeler, “to call back.” Repeal is almost always used in the context of law: When a government decides to get rid of an ordinance or law, that ordinance or law is repealed. That means it is no longer in effect, like if the weather becomes unseasonably hot, the schools might repeal the part of the dress code to permit students to wear shorts.
Vocabulary lists containing repeal
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Vocabulary from the Third and Final Presidential Debate, October 19, 2016
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The American Revolution - Introductory
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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.
See Examples For:
In the immediate aftermath of the repeal of the proposed legislation, this academic postmortem, published in the monthly peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs, speculated that the MCCA’s failure was, indeed, partly due to financial reasons.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
“The California Constitution requires the legislature to go back to the voters if it wishes to amend or repeal a voter-passed law like Prop. 28.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Yet repeal is a possibility in some states.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
There have been hunger strikes demanding farmers' rights, affirmative action, environmental protections, anti-corruption laws and the repeal of controversial security legislation.
From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026
As the news of the repeal was broadcast over the radio, stores like New York’s Gimbels and Bloomingdale’s immediately opened their liquor departments.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
Some have called in the "Art of the Repeal".
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 2025
Repeal of that restriction will ease the burdens D.C. residents bear for the federal presence.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 21, 2023
“They did that through canvassing: going door-to-door, knocking, and having conversations,” said Sinéad Kennedy, a member of Together for Yes’ national executive committee and co-founder of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment.
From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2022
Repeal of the law was approved by Congress and President Barack Obama in late 2010 and took effect nine months later, allowing lesbian, gay and bisexual people to serve openly.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 24, 2021
Not long after this, the disciple announced that he had gone off, with his wife and her sister, to Ireland, for the avowed purpose of forwarding the Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Union.
From The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume I (of 2) by Florence A. Thomas Marshall
Last week, the government introduced a new law that repeals and rebrands the scheme.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2025
A major wave of repeals took place in 1985, when Minnesota, South Carolina, and Texas eliminated their blue laws.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 20, 2025
The new policy repeals the previous code, which banned camping only at parks and the beach.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2025
When asked by Batch if someone wearing a mask for health purposes in public would be violating the law, a legislative staff member said it would, because the bill repeals the exemption.
From Seattle Times ● May 14, 2024
These acts are occasional repeals of that part of the constitution, which forbids the same persons to exercise legislative and judiciary powers, at the same time.
From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph
Because the GPO has been repealed, your wife’s teacher pension will no longer reduce or eliminate her spousal benefit.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
So many states had repealed so many firearm regulations that the District of Columbia’s stringent handgun ban looked like a true outlier.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2026
The charter amendment ballot measure approved Tuesday would avoid that result and restore the inadvertently repealed funding.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
DST, which also helped conserve fuel during the first world war, was unpopular with farmers and was repealed after the war.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
In 1933, by ratification of all the states, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
In 2020, I calculated that repealing the firewall would lead to $2.2 trillion in higher subsidy spending over a decade for the estimated 24 million people who would switch from employer coverage to the exchanges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
But it soon became clear that repealing the previous legislation was one thing; how to replace it quite another.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
However, repealing the earnings test would likely lead to more people claiming Social Security early, hastening the system’s impending insolvency.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 15, 2026
France is Thursday expected to move towards repealing outdated legislation that defines people enslaved in its colonies as "moveable goods", in a symbolic move as the country grapples with its colonial legacy.
From Barron's ● May 28, 2026
It is as if anyone who proposed repealing a stupid law, like the one forbidding interracial marriage, must be a black-cloaked, bomb-clutching anarchist.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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.
