suppression

American  

[suh-presh-uhn] / səˈprɛʃ ən /

noun

• suppressions
  plural

1. the act of suppressing.

2. the state of being suppressed.

3. Psychoanalysis. conscious inhibition of an impulse.

4. Botany. the absence of parts normally or usually present due to the action of frost, disease, or insects.

5. Radio, Electronics. the elimination of a component of a varying emission, as the elimination of a frequency or group of frequencies from a signal.

6. Electricity. the reduction or elimination of irregular current oscillations or frequencies in a circuit.

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suppression British  

/ səˈprɛʃən /

noun

1. the act or process of suppressing or the condition of being suppressed

2. psychoanal the conscious avoidance of unpleasant thoughts Compare repression

3. electronics the act or process of suppressing a frequency, oscillation, etc

4. biology the failure of an organ or part to develop

5. med the cessation of any physiological process

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonsuppression
  noun
• resuppression
  noun
• self-suppression
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• suppressions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of suppression

First recorded in 1520–30; from Latin suppressiōn-, stem of suppressiō “a pressing under”; equivalent to suppress + -ion

Explanation

Suppression is the act of keeping something from happening — like the suppression of your laughter when your best friend passes you a funny note in class. In psychology, suppression is the act of stopping yourself from thinking or feeling something. It is generally presumed to be ineffective because even if you suppress or hold back an emotion, like anger, that feeling returns with a vengeance. Suppression can also mean the act of holding something else back, like the suppression of a book from publication because you don't like its message.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

suppression suppressions

She started researching anger after suspecting her female clients' suppression of it was the root cause of some of their physical conditions.

From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026

Forest Service, are overgrown because of decades of fire suppression, and that thinning them out through controlled burns would help reduce the amount of water absorbed by upland vegetation.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

The United Nations Security Council voted on Tuesday to extend by six months the work of the gang suppression force deployed to combat violent criminal syndicates ravaging Haiti.

From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026

The team also identified the main mechanism behind the effect -- suppression of a form of cell death known as ferroptosis.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 25, 2026

When the Reichstag building burned down, which became the pretext for Hitler’s suppression of political dissent, Szilard was dismayed by the failure of his German friends to grasp the developing reality.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

I understood that just because something happened to me, it didn’t suspend the suppressions of time and the failures of memory and the most human of all errors, bureaucratic filing systems.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 4, 2020

Whereas British rule in India had long been marked by violent revolts and brutal suppressions, the British Army was able to march out of the country with barely a shot fired and only seven casualties.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 22, 2015

The Forest Service and the Department of Interior can transfer money from other programs once their fire suppressions accounts have been depleted.

From US News ● May 5, 2015

And there were a remarkable range of those as well: dark pageboy, brown mullet, reddish bob — all heroic suppressions, in the cause of art, of her natural blondness.

From New York Times ● Feb. 20, 2010

He seems to carry the weight of those suppressions on his conscience.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Related Words

• elimination
• overthrow