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AVERSE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(usually followed by 'to') strongly opposed
Example:
clearly indisposed to grant their request
Synonyms:
antipathetic; antipathetical; averse; indisposed; loath; loth
Classified under:
Similar:
disinclined (unwilling because of mild dislike or disapproval)
Context examples:
Had Dick had his way, they would have been good friends; but White Fang was averse to friendship.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
His cold and proud nature was always averse, however, from anything in the shape of public applause, and he bound me in the most stringent terms to say no further word of himself, his methods, or his successes—a prohibition which, as I have explained, has only now been removed.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Martin wanted him to talk shop, and, though he seemed averse at first, succeeded in making him do it.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
It is the more strange, since we know that Turner himself was averse to the idea.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse to it.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
“No! There's no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,” observed Uriah, “when it's got to this.” —that I did, said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly at his partner, that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
After a short silence, he told me, he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“I cannot admire his taste,” I remarked, “if it is indeed a fact that he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as this Miss Turner.”
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The chances are that she would be as averse to its being seen by Mr. Godfrey Norton, as our client is to its coming to the eyes of his princess.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“No, he was averse to it also. No one but Mr. McCarthy was in favour of it.”
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
