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To drive back; to force to return; to check the advance of; to repulse as, to repel an enemy or an assailant. Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide. Pope. They repelled each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Macaulay.

The principle of repulsion; the quality or capacity of repelling; repulsion.

Driving back; able or tending to repel.

One who, or that which, repels.

Mutually repellent. De Quincey.

The quality or state of being self-repelling.

Made up of parts, as molecules or atoms, which mutually repel each other; as, gases are self-repelling.

ear approach; admittance; admission; accessibility; as, to gain access to a prince. I did repel his letters, and denied His access to me. Shak.

Astringent and repellent. -- n.

ate, or defeat; to thwart. "A baffled purpose." De Quincey. A suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all. South. Calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a . . . recent period, the most enlightened nations. Prescott. The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us. Locke. Baffling win…

down. [Colloq.] -- To beat into, to teach or instill, by repetition. -- To beat off, to repel or drive back. -- To beat out, to extend by hammering. -- To beat out of a thing, to cause to relinquish it, or give it up. "Nor can anything beat their posterity out of it to this day." South. -- To beat the dust. (Man.)…

oarding it. -- Boarding pike (Naut.), a pike used by sailors in boarding a vessel, or in repelling an attempt to board it. Totten. -- Boarding school, a school in which pupils receive board and lodging as well as instruction.

, to chemical substances held in solution. They may be attracted (positive chemotaxis) or repelled (negative chemotaxis). -- Chem`o*tac"tic (#), a. -- Chem`o*tac"tic*al*ly, adv.

ay combated. Shak. And combated in silence all these reasons. Milton. Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled. Goldsmith.

se fear or timidity. He raised the house with loud and coward cries. Shak. Invading fears repel my coward joy. Proir.

The conversion of cell walls into a material which repels water, as in cork.

To ward or fend off; to drive back or away; to repel. [A Latinism & Obs.] Th' other strove for to defend The force of Vulcan with his might and main. Spenser.

is, which tends to take a position at right angles to the lines of magnetic force, and is repelled by either pole of the magnet.

To retard; to repel; to do damage to. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Reserved or repelling in manners; cold; not cordial; somewhat haughty; as, a distant manner. He passed me with a distant bow. Goldsmith.