Definition of "repugnancy"
repugnancy
noun
countable and uncountable, plural repugnancies
The quality of being repugnant: offensiveness, repulsion.
Quotations
[…] howsoever nature dictates, that government is necessary for the safety of the society, yet every singular person, by corruption and selfe-love, hath a naturall aversenesse and repugnancie to submit to any; every man would be a King himselfe […]
1644, Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, London: John Field, Quest. VIII, page 49
If you be carved with any thing […] which you do not like, conceal (as much as in you lieth) your repugnancies, and receive it however: And though your disgust many times is invincible, and it would be insufferable tyranny to require you should eat what your stomach nauseates; yet it will shew your civility to accept it, though you let it lye on your plate, pretending to eat, till you meet with a fit opportunity of changing your plate, without any palpable discovery of your disgust.
1673, Hannah Woolley, “Some choice Observations for a Gentlewomans Behaviour at Table”, in The Gentlewomans Companion, London: Dorman Newman, page 70
The quality of being repugnant: (logical) opposition, contradiction, incompatibility.
Quotations
For if the paralleles be of this nature, that howe muche the nearer we are th’equinoctiall, so muche the greater is the heate: and howe muche the furder remoued from th’equinoctiall, so muche the colder the qualitie of the aire is: there must seme a manifest repugnancie, betwixt Auicenne, & the Geographers.
1559, William Cuningham, The Cosmographical Glasse, Book 2
[…] this Notion is the Source from whence do spring, all those Amusing Geometrical Paradoxes, which have such a direct Repugnancy to the plain, common Sense of Mankind, and are admitted with so much Reluctance, into a Mind not yet debauched by Learning […]
1710, George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, pp. 175-176
(archaic) Resistance, fighting back.
Quotations
Why do fond men expose themselves to battle,And not endure all threats? sleep upon’t,And let the foes quietly cut their throats,Without repugnancy?
c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene v]