Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Difficult or impossible to control or restrain.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Not repressible; incapable of being repressed, restrained, or kept under control.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Not capable of being repressed, restrained, or controlled
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Not
containable orcontrollable .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective impossible to repress or control
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection!
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You often hear someone described as irrepressible, so why is no one ever called repressible?
Archive 2006-07-01 Ann Althouse 2006
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Job's outward calamities affect his mind. poured out -- in irrepressible complaints (Ps 42: 4; Jos 7: 5).
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(_As she rises on the last movement of the dance toward ecstasy, the excitement rises with her, expressing itself in short, irrepressible yelps, at the highest point of which a scream from_
The Arrow-Maker A Drama in Three Acts Mary Hunter Austin 1901
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Some of the men now coming over it with the police had travelled it with Wolseley a few years previously and would have vivid recollections of the flies and mud and portages and the need of manufacturing skidways over the bogs, but they would also recall the irrepressible and uproarious spirit in which they used to sing of their additional accomplishments in the rollicking "Jolly Boys" chorus:
Policing the Plains Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police R.G. MacBeth
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"The screw driver is mightier than the sword, hey, Dink?" called the irrepressible Roy, as Dinky hurried away into the darkness.
Tom Slade with the Colors Percy Keese Fitzhugh 1913
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I'm breaking into what John Norton would call my irrepressible levity.
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He abounded in pretexts; he even sometimes brought contributions; he was persistent and penetrating, he was known as the irrepressible Tarrant.
The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) Henry James 1879
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Sayonara Zetsubo-Sensei character Kafuka Fuura has been called her irrepressible optimism.
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One recalls the irrepressible Hyman Kaplan, who explained to his night-school class that the "R.S.V.P." he'd tacked onto his composition meant "Reply, vill you plizz?"
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