aversive
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Tending to repel or dissuade.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhvursuhvSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈvɝsəv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Tending to repel or dissuade
Tending to repel; causing avoidance.
noun
psychology
An unpleasant stimulus intended to induce a change in behaviour.
grammar
A grammatical case indicating that something is avoided or feared; the evitative case.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Tending to repel or dissuade
Used this way, aversive is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use aversive
- “Aversive conditioning.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Unpleasant
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Conditioning to avoid an aversive stimulus.
Any negative stimulus to which an organism will learn to make a response that avoids it.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.