AVERSION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does aversion mean? 

• AVERSION (noun)
  The noun AVERSION has 2 senses:

1. a feeling of intense dislike

2. the act of turning yourself (or your gaze) away

  Familiarity information: AVERSION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AVERSION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A feeling of intense dislike

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

antipathy; aversion; distaste

Hypernyms ("aversion" is a kind of...):

dislike (a feeling of aversion or antipathy)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of turning yourself (or your gaze) away

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

aversion; averting

Context example:

averting her gaze meant that she was angry

Hypernyms ("aversion" is a kind of...):

avoidance; dodging; shunning; turning away (deliberately avoiding; keeping away from or preventing from happening)

Derivation:

avert (turn away or aside)

 Context examples 

It takes enormous amounts of energy, such as in the extreme environments within Jupiter and Saturn, to smash the atoms with enough force to overcome their natural aversion.

(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

These parallel circuits drove opposing emotional states: avoidance (aversion) and approach (preference).

(Researchers identify key brain circuits for reward-seeking and avoidance behavior, National Institutes of Health)

This was despite being told they had a strong aversion spicy food!

(Sometimes You Shouldn't Say Sorry, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Of all things in the world inconstancy is my aversion.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Mr. Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The rejection of foods that our brain associates with gastric toxicity and poisoning is characteristic of what experts call taste aversion learning.

(Researchers identify area of the amygdala involved in taste aversion, University of Granada)

Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up, and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)