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Repressive   /riprˈɛsɪv/   Listen
Repressive

adjective
1.
Restrictive of action.  Synonyms: inhibitory, repressing.  "An overly strict and inhibiting discipline"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Repressive" Quotes from Famous Books



... to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and wanted to have Parliament specially summoned in order to carry through repressive legislation. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... subjection; as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based on our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society, the taking possession of the means of production ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... germ of fatal differences in the temperament of the two partners in iniquity—whatever the iniquity is. Germany has been the evil counsellor of Russia on all the questions of her Polish problem. Always urging the adoption of the most repressive measures with a perfectly logical duplicity, Prince Bismarck's Empire has taken care to couple the neighbourly offers of military assistance with merciless advice. The thought of the Polish provinces accepting a frank reconciliation with a humanised Russia and bringing the weight ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... least half the population, and on two later recurrences only smaller proportions, led to a scarcity of laborers and added strength to their demand for commutation of personal services by money-payments and for higher wages. This demand was met by the ruling classes with sternly repressive measures, and the socialistic Peasants' Revolt of John Ball and Wat Tyler in 1381 was violently crushed out in blood, but it expressed a great human cry for justice which ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... Liberal reaction set in, aided by divisions in the Conservative party arising mainly over church questions. Montt's successors, Jose Joaquin Perez (1861-1871), Federico Errazuriz (1871-1876) and Anibal Pinto (1876-1881), abandoned the repressive policy of their predecessors, invited the co-operation of the Liberals, and allowed discontent to vent itself freely in popular agitation. Some democratic changes were made in the constitution, notably a law forbidding the re-election of a president, and the gradual and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... perception of something secret, ominously secret, in the nature of the governess which defied detection. If Inquisitive Science, vowed to medical research, could dissect firmness of will, working at its steadiest repressive action—then, the mystery of Miss Minerva's inner nature might possibly have been revealed. As it was, nothing more remarkable exposed itself to view than an irritable temper; serving perhaps as safety-valve to an underlying ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... our story:—That this most intense and vital sentiment should find expression whenever the repressive power of the conquering people was removed was most natural; that it would be fanned into a white heat by the freedman's enfranchisement was beyond cavil; and that Red Wing should escape such manifestations of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... Moslem neighbours, and, though possessed of no great share of political influence, powerful, in that the trade and commerce of inland Turkey was largely in their hands. Wherever they went they established their schools; many were lawyers, doctors, and professors of education. Certain repressive measures were brought to bear on them; they were not, for instance, allowed to carry arms, except when, in accordance with Turkish conscriptive laws, they served in the Ottoman army. But many of them, by paying their exemption ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... opinions and ideas," Vignon continued. "By sheer terror and despotism, and by no other means, can you extinguish the genius of the French nation; for the language lends itself admirably to allusion and ambiguity. Epigram breaks out the more for repressive legislation; it is like steam in an engine without a safety-valve.—The King, for example, does right; if a newspaper is against him, the Minister gets all the credit of the measure, and vice versa. A newspaper ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... pagan ignorance precluded one grand requisite for crushing the dominion of iniquity; for there was nothing to insinuate or to force its way into the recesses of the soul, to apply there a repressive power to the depraved ardor which glowed in the passions. That was left, inaccessible and inextinguishable, as the subterranean fires in a volcanic region. And in the mighty impulse to evil with which it was continually operating as an energy of feeling, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... High Provost of Notting Hill," continued the herald, "does not propose, in the event of your surrender, to use his victory for any of those repressive purposes which others have entertained against him. He will leave you your free laws and your free cities, your flags and your governments. He will not destroy the religion of South Kensington, or crush ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... eyes of the public. He succeeds eventually, but not until he has encountered every sort of contemptible opposition and hypocritical evasion of the plain truth. The social satire of the piece is subtle and sharp; what the author really aims at is to illustrate, by a specific example, the repressive forces that dominate the life of a small people, and make it almost impossible for any sort of ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne

... bold relief as a system built up and maintained by fraud and force, bound in the course of nature to last only as long as the deception could be carried on and the repressive force kept up to sufficient strength. Its maintenance required that the different sections be isolated from each other so that there could be no growth toward a common understanding and cooeperation, and its permanence depended upon ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... She had not been brought up in the rigid, repressive school that had surrounded Mrs. MacCall's childhood. As for Linda, the Finnish girl, if she had her way she would be "stuffing" (to quote Mrs. MacCall) ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... try to force anyone; that there was nothing to prevent a Pole speaking Polish and wearing Polish dress, if he chose; that the only weapon we used against those who desired to uphold the customs of Europe was that of ridicule; and that it was the repressive measures such as, for example, the repressive action taken by Prussia against the Poles and the Danes, the Alsatians and the Lorrainers, that had aroused a combative instinct in these peoples and made them cling to every vestige ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... sustainable over an extended period, especially when progress is not being made. The longer the United States remains in Iraq without progress, the more resentment will grow among Iraqis who believe they are subjects of a repressive American occupation. As one U.S. official said to us, "Our leaving would make it worse. . . . The current approach without modification will not ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... January (N. S.), Sir William Stanley entertained the magistrates of Deventer at a splendid banquet. There was free conversation at table concerning the idle suspicions which had been rife in the Provinces as to his good intentions and the censures which had been cast upon him for the repressive measures which he had thought necessary to adopt for the security of the city. He took that occasion to assure his guests that the Queen of England had not a more loyal subject than himself, nor the Netherlands a more devoted friend. The company expressed themselves fully restored ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... thicker; one could almost taste it. I couldn't suppress a shudder. It was cold, dank, repressive. Neither of us spoke a word on our way downtown. Hobart opened the door to our apartment; he turned ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... are free from the vexatious litigation that fosters criticism and they are trusted as never before in history. It has been a factor of no small importance that enabled our state to uphold the sovereignty of the law without repressive measures directed against freedom of speech ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... traffic from the land, but it is not so simple a process. It is generally agreed that both education and legislation are necessary to check the evil. The first is necessary for the public health, and to support repressive laws. As a helpful means of repression it is proposed that the social evil, along with questions of social morals, like gambling, excise, and amusements, shall be taken out of the hands of the municipal ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... that the state must be abolished he does not mean what he says. What he wants to abolish is the repressive, not the productive state. He cannot possibly object to being furnished with the opportunity of writing to his comrade three thousand miles away, of drinking pure water, or taking a walk in the park. Of course when he finds the post-office ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... in the grip of a bloody revolution! Thousands of workers are slaughtered by machine guns in New York City! Washington is on fire! Industry is at a standstill and thousands of workers are starving! The government is using the most brutal and repressive measures to put down the revolution! Disorganization, crime, chaos, rape, murder and arson are the order of the day—the inevitable results ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... nature, few are more interesting than that which issued in the little colony of Plymouth. But in point of numbers, and in respect to the storm and stress of conflicting ideals which produce great events, Plymouth was soon eclipsed by Massachusetts Bay. The repressive measures of Elizabeth and James I bore less heavily on the Nonconformist than on the Separatist; but during the early years of Charles the activities of the former became the special object of royal displeasure. And from the point of view of the king the Nonconformist who wished ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... subject has already been discussed at length[17] it need not be enlarged upon here. In Tusayan the kivas are rectangular and separated from the houses; in Zuni and in some other pueblos they are also rectangular, but are incorporated in the house clusters—a feature doubtless brought about by the repressive policy of the Spanish monks. In some of the pueblos, as in Taos, they are circular, and in many of the older ruins the same form is found. In the large ruins of Chaco canyon the kivas occur in groups ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... attempt to arrest Diderot's courageous and enlightened undertaking. Yet in truth it was only the customary inference from an accepted principle, that it is the business or the right of governments to guide thought and regulate its expression. The Jesuits acted on this theory, and resorted to repressive power and the secular arm whenever they could. The Jansenists repudiated the principle, but eagerly practised it whenever the turn of intrigue gave them ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... woman's. When the thing is settled there is always present to the man something of a feeling of clipped wings; whereas the woman is conscious of a new power of expanding her pinions. The certainty of the thing is to him repressive. He has done his work, and gained his victory,—and by conquering has become a slave. To her the certainty of the thing is the removal of a restraint which has hitherto always been on her. She can tell him everything, and be told everything,—whereas ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... difficulty in selecting phrases repressive enough to be artistic, in which to tell her that he ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the Kolokol in London in the Russian language, and by their agents spread it broadcast over Russia. The stifling of the insurrection in Poland strengthened the reactionary party. More repressive edicts were issued, with the usual result, that secret societies multiplied everywhere. Then came the revolution and commune in Paris, which greatly strengthened the spread of revolutionary ideas here. Another circumstance ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... that noticeably increased about 1835, and reached large proportions by 1860. It was also seen in a disposition to attack the government for stigmatizing the trade as criminal,[8] then in a disinclination to take any measures which would have rendered our repressive laws effective; and finally in such articulate declarations by prominent men as this: "Experience having settled the point, that this Trade cannot be abolished by the use of force, and that blockading squadrons serve ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... inland, north of the territory which the Portuguese in Europe claim, and endeavour to commence that system on the East which has been so eminently successful on the West Coast; a system combining the repressive efforts of H.M. cruisers with lawful trade and Christian Missions—the moral and material results of which have been so gratifying. I hope to ascend the Rovuma, or some other river North of Cape Delgado, and, in addition to my ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was borne in London in 1593, and was executed there in 1641. He was privy councilor to Charles I, and was Lord Deputy of Ireland. On account of his repressive measures to uphold the absolute power of the king he was impeached by the Long Parliament and was executed for treason. The essence of his defence is in the sentence quoted by De Morgan, to which Pym replied that taken as a whole, the acts ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... and stood before it. After a moment she took out a book and deliberately turned we leaves. Her attitude was plainly repressive. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... mother, Mary of Guise, became regent. The Reformation had then begun to gain adherents in Scotland. On the accession of Elizabeth, at a time when the religious wars in France were about to begin, the Scottish regent undertook repressive measures of increased rigor. The principal agent in turning Scotland to the Protestant side was John Knox, an intrepid preacher, honest, and rough in his ways, deeply imbued with the spirit of Calvinism, and free from every vestige of superstitious deference for human potentates. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... dressed in white, sat erect and nervous amid these explosive ingredients, attentive to Mr. Eager, repressive towards Miss Lavish, watchful of old Mr. Emerson, hitherto fortunately asleep, thanks to a heavy lunch and the drowsy atmosphere of Spring. She looked on the expedition as the work of Fate. But for it she would have avoided George Emerson successfully. In an open manner he had shown that he wished ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... instincts. Our economic literature shows that we are but rarely curious to know whether industrialism is suited to man's inherited nature, or what man in turn will do to our rules of economic conduct in case these rules are repressive. The motives to economic activity which have done the major service in orthodox economic texts and teachings have been either the vague middle-class virtues of thrift, justice, and solvency, or the equally vague moral sentiments of 'striving for the welfare of others,' 'desire ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... of all, calls men to repentance, bids them turn away from their natural selves, and, to find that other and realer self, enter the straight and narrow gate. The call is not an arbitrary command, born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a profound exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human progress, having behind it the inviolable sanction of the truth. Such preaching would have the authentic note. It is self-verifying. It stirs to answer that quality—both ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... that of our power, and therefore our obligation, to arrest the corruption round us, by our own purity. The presence of a good man hinders the devil from having elbow-room to do his work. Do you and I exercise a repressive influence (if we do not do anything better), so that evil and low-toned life is ashamed to show itself in our presence, and skulks back as do wrong-doers from the bull's-eye of a policeman's lantern? It is not a high function, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... obnoxious form being repressed by the presence of the added starter. This condition is interpreted as indicating that the addition of a starter to cream which already contains developing bacteria will prevent those originally present in the cream from growing.[163] This repressive action of one species on another is a well-known bacteriological fact, but it must be remembered that such an explanation is only applicable in those cases where the culture organism is better able to develop than those forms that already ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... not obtrusive, and not easily put out of the way. You do not know by external observation that she is in the room; you feel it instinctively. The atmosphere she brings with her is peculiar, you cannot tell how. It is neither warm nor chill, neither moist nor dry; but it is repressive. You do not move in it with natural freedom, although you feel nothing that could be called gene. Her manner is generally sweet, sometimes even caressing, and you feel flattered and elevated as you meet her approving eye. But you cannot get into it. There is a glassy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... into which France had been thrown by the capture of its king increased rather than diminished. Among all classes men strove in the absence of a repressive power to gain advantages and privileges. Serious riots occurred in many parts, and the demagogues of Paris, headed by Stephen Marcel, and Robert le Coq, bishop of Leon, set at defiance the Dauphin and the ministers and lieutenant of the king. Massacre and violence ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... the voice of the press and the thunder of the hustings. Politics in Ireland was nothing else than the expression given to the despotism of an insignificant minority over almost the entire body of the people. For, despite all their repressive measures, the enemies of the Catholic faith could never pretend even to a semblance in point of numbers, much less to a majority, over the children of the creed taught by Patrick. Ireland remained Catholic throughout; and its oppressors ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Bohemians, Poles, South Slavs, and others), 45 per cent; Roumanians, over 6 per cent; and Italians less than 2 per cent. The Germans and Hungarians, although only a minority of the total population, had long exercised political control over the others and by repressive measures had tried to stamp out their schools, newspapers, and languages. Unrest was continuous during the nineteenth century; and the rise of the independent states of Serbia, Roumania, and Bulgaria tended to make the Slavic and Roumanian ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... large territorial possessions of ecclesiastical bodies, impressed the people with the power of the Church. These things came to the fifteenth century as established facts. The spirit of revolt indeed had appeared with Wiclif and his followers in the fourteenth century, but Lollardy met with severe repressive opposition. It was not till Tudor times that the new spirit, stimulated by the Revival of Learning, the Reformation, the invention of printing from type, geographical discovery, the suppression of long years of internecine warfare, and the establishment ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... mutually understanding glances. If a great lady entertaining a penniless young man can be demure, then demure was the Princess Sophie Zobraska. Paul, who prided himself on his knowledge of feminine subtlety, was at fault; but who was he to appreciate the repressive influence of a practical-minded convent friend, quickly formative and loudly assertive of opinions, on an impressionable lady awakening to curiosities? He was just a dunderhead, like any one of us—just as much as the most eminent feminine psychologist alive—which is saying ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence in 1822 of Brazil as a colony. A 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy; for most of the next six decades repressive governments ran the country. In 1974, a left-wing military coup installed broad democratic reforms. The following year Portugal granted independence to all of its African colonies. Portugal entered the EC ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Majlis in the late 1990s, attempts to foster political reform in response to popular dissatisfaction have floundered as conservative politicians have prevented reform measures from being enacted, increased repressive measures, and consolidated their control over ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... man of feeling and imagination should be allowed fairly to run himself out. The course apparently is, that the tree should send out its rank shoots, and then that you should prune them, rather than that by some repressive means you should prevent the rank shoots coming forth at all. The way to get a high-spirited horse to be content to stay peaceably in its stall is to allow it to have a tearing gallop, and thus get out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor, can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic, or 'regular' school? The American Medical Association, with its reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... general good in every way. When the law is intolerant in principle, men will be hypocrites from policy. You cannot train children to speak the truth if, from whatever cause, they have an interest in deception. A repressive discipline induces a coarse outward submission, but cannot reach the inward parts: it only engenders hatred, and substitutes for open revolt an insidious secret retaliation. Those only that come under the generous ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... Vilna declared that the repressive policy, pursued during the last few years by the "Jewish Committee," had thrown a large part of the Jewish people "into utmost disorder," and had made the Jews "shiver and shudder at the thought that a general Jewish statute had been drafted by the same ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... toward damp emotional effects; he was perpetually dissolving in "showers of tears." In fact, our novelists down to the memory of living man gave way to their feelings with far more abandon than is true of the present repressive period. One who reads Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby" with this in mind, will perhaps be surprised to find how often the hero frankly indulges his grief; he cries with a freedom that suggests a trait inherited from his mother of moist memory. No doubt, there was abuse of this "sensibility" in earlier ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... no doubt of him, for he was one of the prisoners that got away," said Captain Carbonel, in a repressive manner. "He has always been a mischievous fellow; but the remarkable thing is that it was his son who came to summon us this morning—John Hewlett, a very good, steady lad. By-the-by, has any one seen him? I sent him home by the Elchester ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... authorities,—as if, he said, they were used to obliging American historians of Venice. The foreign tyranny which cast a pathetic glamour over the romantic city had certainly not appeared to grudge such publicity as Elmore wished to give her heroic memories, though it was then at its most repressive period, and formed a check upon the whole life of the place. The tears were hardly yet dry in the despairing eyes that had seen the French fleet sail away from the Lido, after Solferino, without firing a shot in behalf ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... for—the daily diminishing interest in your doings, the poorly assumed attention as you attempt to talk over some plan for the future; then the yawn, and by degrees, the covert sneer, the little sarcasm, and finally, the frank, open stare of boredom. Ah, Duke, when you all carry out your repressive legislation against women of evil lives, don't fail to include in your schedule the Unsympathetic Wives. They are the women whose victims show the sorriest scars; they are the really "bad women" of the world: all the others ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... his threatening face, though innocent of its meaning, and she remains. Her panting breathing comes and goes as if it would choke her; but with a repressive hand upon her ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... "no American or Englishman can support or justify the repressive measures so often carried out ruthlessly by the Russian police. Still, even these may be exaggerated, for the police have to deal with a people very much different from our own. It is rather curious that at this moment I am in vague trouble concerning the police. I am ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... this," he said. "Repressive measures will be passed in Germany, as soon as the act can be got through. That will mean that Germany will be brought up into line with the rest of Europe, America, Australia, and half Asia, throughout her whole empire. That will ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson



Words linked to "Repressive" :   restrictive, repress



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