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ABHORRENCE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Hate coupled with disgust
Synonyms:
abhorrence; abomination; detestation; execration; loathing; odium
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("abhorrence" is a kind of...):
disgust (strong feelings of dislike)
hate; hatred (the emotion of intense dislike; a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action)
Derivation:
abhor (find repugnant)
abhorrent (offensive to the mind)
Context examples:
But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued), folded them up and put them in his pocket.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But I was a little comforted by a message from his majesty, that he would give orders to the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form: which, however, I could not obtain; and I was privately assured, that the empress, conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, removed to the most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those buildings should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of her chief confidents could not forbear vowing revenge.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
I cannot think of it without abhorrence.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
She paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She could not determine how her mother would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
