re·pu·di·ate

(rĭ-pyo͞o′dē-āt′)

tr.v. re·pu·di·at·ed, re·pu·di·at·ing, re·pu·di·ates

1. To reject the validity or authority of: "Chaucer ... not only came to doubt the worth of his extraordinary body of work, but repudiated it" (Joyce Carol Oates).

2. To reject emphatically as unfounded, untrue, or unjust: repudiated the accusation.

3. To refuse to recognize or pay: repudiate a debt.

a. To disown (a child, for example).

b. To refuse to have any dealings with.

[Latin repudiāre, repudiāt-, from repudium, divorce.]

re·pu′di·a′tive adj.

re·pu′di·a′tor n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive

However, there was in Lenin's conception 'no overshadowing by anarchist-trade unionist utopianism, repudiator of the state and champion of direct management by the "producers"'.

Anniversaries of the October Revolution in the political-cultural magazine of the Italian Communist Party: Rinascita, 1957-1987

There was little need for Madison to duplicate Jefferson's role as the repudiator of Federalist ideology and governmental commitments.

The heir apparent presidency of James Madison

Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with bonds bearing less interest than we now pay."

US history's five worst presidential inaugural addresses

as it would be if the repudiator had been a State or a municipality or a

When reliance is detrimental: economic, moral, and policy arguments for expectation damages in contracts terminated for the convenience of the government

(8) But Constantine viewed himself as a repudiator, not as a wielder, of violence in mission.

Violence and mission in the fourth and fifth centuries: Lessons for today

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