repugnant

repugnant 1 Repugnant, repellent, abhorrent, distasteful, obnoxious, invidious are comparable when they mean so alien or unlikable as to arouse antagonism and aversion.

Repugnant is applied to something so incompatible with one's ideas, principles, or tastes as to stir up resistance and loathing

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soon the pressures of male eyes, eyes expressing sex . . . became repugnant to her— Peggy Bennett

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the nonlegal methods of the magistrates in dispensing judgment, so repugnant to the spirit of the common law— Parrington

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Repellent usually implies a forbidding or unlovely character in something that causes one to back away from it

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the mediocre was repellent to them; cant and sentiment made them sick— Rose Macaulay

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what he does say is that hanging is barbarous and sickening, that electrocution and the gas chamber are no less brutal and repellent— Rovere

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Abhorrent (see also HATEFUL) is applied to something that is incapable of association or existence with something else, and it often implies profound antagonism

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dictatorial methods abhorrent to American ways of thinking— Forum

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Distasteful is applied to something that one instinctively shrinks from not because it in itself is necessarily unlikable but because it is contrary to one's particular taste or inclination

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even the partition of the world into the animate and the inanimate is distasteful to science, which dislikes any lines that cannot be crossed— Inge

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she finds it distasteful to think of using the personal belongings of . . . previous occupants— Kenneth Roberts

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Obnoxious is applied to what is so highly objectionable, usually on personal grounds, that one cannot endure the sight or presence of it or him with equanimity

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the nation had sulked itself into a state of tacit rebellion against the obnoxious Volstead Law—5. H. Adams

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an opportunity to . . . make himself generally obnoxious— Simeon Ford

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Invidious is applied to something that cannot be used (as a word) or made (as a distinction) or undertaken (as a task or project) without arousing or creating ill will, envy, or resentment

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the invidious word usury— Hume

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what I would urge, therefore, is that no invidious distinction should be made between the Old Learning and the New— J. R. Lowell

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undertake the invidious task of deciding what is to be approved and what is to be condemned— Daniel Jones

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Analogous words: foreign, alien, extraneous, *extrinsic: uncongenial, incompatible, incongruous, *inconsonant: *antipathetic, averse, unsympathetic

Antonyms: congenial

2 repulsive, revolting, *offensive, loathsome

Analogous words: odious, *hateful, abominable, detestable: foul, nasty (see DIRTY): vile, *base, low