AVERSION

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of turning yourself (or your gaze) away

Example:

averting her gaze meant that she was angry

Synonyms:

aversion; averting

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("aversion" is a kind of...):

avoidance; dodging; shunning; turning away (deliberately avoiding; keeping away from or preventing from happening)

Derivation:

avert (turn away or aside)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A feeling of intense dislike

Synonyms:

antipathy; aversion; distaste

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("aversion" is a kind of...):

dislike (a feeling of aversion or antipathy)

Credits

Context examples:

It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Don't take off your apron, whatever you do, it's peculiarly becoming, said Laurie, as Jo bestowed his especial aversion in her capacious pocket and offered her arm to support his feeble steps.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In his puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father’s house while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Tcf712, which regulates the expression of genes in the pancreas and liver that determine blood glucose levels, also regulates the response of cells in the habenula, an area of the brain that controls reward and aversion behaviors, to nicotine.

(Nicotine addiction linked to diabetes through a DNA-regulating gene in animal models, National Institutes of Health)

Different neurotransmitters were linked to aversion and preference within these neurocircuits – corticotropin releasing factor was involved in aversion, while cholecystokinin played a role in preference.

(Researchers identify key brain circuits for reward-seeking and avoidance behavior, National Institutes of Health)

Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) may form part of the mechanisms involved in anorexia and other similar disorders, particularly if associations arise between food and discomfort, or even with negative emotions.

(Researchers identify area of the amygdala involved in taste aversion, University of Granada)

Far be it from me to say otherwise; and anything in reason—a bow thrown out, perhaps—though, between ourselves, if there is one thing more than another my aversion, it is a patched-on bow.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.