repudiate

Etymology

The verb is borrowed from Latin repudiō (“to divorce, reject, refuse to accept”), through its past-participial stem.^[2][3] The earliest English form, an adjective meaning "divorced, rejected", is borrowed from Latin repudiātus, the past participle of the same verb.^{[2][4][5][6][7]} The Latin verb is from repudium (“divorce, rejection”),^{[2][5][4][8][9]} in which re- (“back, away”) is joined to a disputed second part.^[5][4] The OED, Klein, Collins and Dictionary.com take this from pudeō (“to be ashamed, to make ashamed”),^{[2][9][10][11]} and Skeat and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged say "perhaps".^[12][13] Barnhart instead connects it with pēs (“foot”), giving an original sense "push away with the foot", and treats the link with shame as popular etymology;^[4] Ayto mentions this as a suggestion, with an underlying sense "kick out".^[8] English had already taken repudy, as a noun and a verb, from French and Latin.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

As an adjective, "divorced, rejected, condemned": 1464, in John Hardyng's Chronicle, which the OED quotes from the printing of 1543.^[4][2][5] As a verb, to cast off or disown: 1534, in G. Joye's translation of Zwingli's psalter.^[2][13] Etymonline and Barnhart date the verb to the 1540s, in the sense "to cast off by divorce".^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

Ayto, Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford make "divorce" the original English meaning,^[8][5][6] as it was in Latin, but the revised OED's first record of the verb is the wider "disown", with the divorcing of a wife following about 1540.^[2] Rejecting things came next: refusing to accept something offered (1548),^[2][4] and rejecting an authority as unwarranted (1560, in Knox).^[2] Johnson (1755) still gave "to divorce; to reject; to put away".^[14] Denying a charge is recorded from 1722,^[2] and condemning an opinion or conduct from 1824 in Etymonline, 1840 in the OED.^[5][2] Refusing to pay a debt dates from 1837,^[2][5] and began as American usage, according to Hoad;^[15] the OED adds the specific case of a state disowning its public debt.^[2] The adjective fell out of use, last recorded in 1771.^[2]

Timeline

• 1464 – adjective, divorced, rejected.^[4][5]
• 1534 – verb, to cast off, disown.^[2][13]
• c. 1540 – of a man, to divorce a wife.^[2] Barnhart has 1545.^[4]
• 1548 – to refuse to accept.^[2][4]
• 1560 – to reject as unauthorized, refuse to obey.^[2]
• 1722 – to deny the truth of a charge.^[2]
• 1837 – to refuse to pay a debt.^[2][5]
• 1840 – to condemn an opinion or behaviour.^[2] Etymonline has 1824.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To refuse to accept the authority or validity of something: The council repudiated the pact its mayor had signed.^[10][2]
2. To cast off or disown a person or thing; to renounce: He repudiated his early poems.^[10][13][2]
3. To deny that a charge is true; to reject as unfounded.^[2][6]
4. To condemn an opinion or conduct; to reject with abhorrence.^[2][6]
5. To refuse to acknowledge or pay a debt.^[10][2][6]
6. Of a man, to divorce or put away a wife.^[2][6][14]

Adjective

1. (obsolete, 1543–1771) Divorced; rejected.^[2][13]

Word family

• repudiative
• repudiator
• repudiable
• repudiation
• repudiatory

Related words

• repudy
• pudendum

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press