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repressed Definition

re·pressed (ri prest′)

adjective

affected by, showing, or resulting from repression

repressed Usage Examples

Modifies a noun

  • sexuality: A repressed sexuality or perhaps impotence is hinted at.
  • emotion: The full release of repressed emotions may not be achieved in a single session.
  • anger: Repressed anger, hostility or sexual tensions unknowingly released by an unhappy subject wreak havoc.
  • memory: I've been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared.
  • passion: Set in a small insular town in America's Deep South, this is a gripping drama of smoldering and repressed passion.

Modifying Another Word

  • sexually: Ginger Lynn is Audrey, a sexually repressed working girl whose love life is going nowhere.
  • emotionally: So much contemporary drama seems to be about men who are either emotionally repressed or losing it completely.
  • deeply: And in writing this book I realized I was writing about this deeply repressed part of myself.
  • rather: Apart from the judo, there was nothing outwardly special about this rather repressed boy.

Used with adjective complement

  • become: As a consequence, many people become emotionally repressed.
  • keep: This highlights the importance of unconscious forces that are normally kept repressed.
repressed Quotes

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

—Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)