disattract

present singular third person disattracts · participle present disattracting · participle past disattracted · past disattracted

1. Synonym of repel.

   Further, the specification of one target group in one target area inevitably disattracts other potentially needful groups.

   1968 January–February, Edward J. O’Donnell, “A place to go and a place to be from…: The Neighborhood Service Center”, in Ruth C. Galaid, editor, Welfare in Review, volume 6, number 1, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, page 18, column 2

   5 more examples

   Man’s spirit, severing, draws after it a third of finite spirits; his soul disparting, leads astray a third of wandering souls; his body, disuniting, attracts a third of disattracting bodies.

   1844 September 1, “Protheic Scripture”, in The New Age, Concordium Gazette, and Temperance Advocate, volume I, number 21, London: […] W. Strange, […], published 1845, page 279

   Some “Socialists” say a “millionaire or a preacher joining the party attracts the attention of other people who might otherwise be hostile to it.” Socialism if it is anything is a revolutionary force and not a side-show “attraction” and people that can be attracted by little tin gods can also be disattracted by the same process.

   1909 February, Fred L. Schwartz, “[News & Views] A Proletarian Movement”, in The International Socialist Review: A Monthly Journal of International Socialist Thought, volume IX, number 8, Chicago, Ill.: Charles H[ope] Kerr & Company, pages 627–628

   That is the use to which advertisers put the air medium; the usefulness and profitable return of which are seriously impaired by the lack of psychological understanding by many of its customers who spend a great deal of money in utilizing it to exploit their wares and to dis-attract business.

   1942 August 19, Chapin Hall, “What Goes On?”, in Los Angeles Times, volume LXI, Los Angeles, Calif., part I (General News), page 9, column 1

   It may not redound to the intellectual and spiritual credit of the Negro PWs, but the attraction of the gadgets and output of American industry acted at the same time “disattract” them from the primitive standard of living In China and North Korea.

   1955 July 8, William Worthy, “Red Bid to Negro PWs Muffed”, in The Christian Science Monitor, volume 47, number 188, Boston, Mass.: Christian Science Publishing Society, page 12, column 7

   Yet Santayana’s insistence that one envisages things sub specie boni or mali whenever one is attracted or disattracted by them serves to remind us of something too often forgotten by moralists, namely that when moral terms are used sincerely they point to an immediately felt value in envisaged situations which is equally present when these are such as the social nature of language makes it hard for us to describe as good or evil, as (for example) when they are such as satisfy or frustrate impulses which are frankly vindictive.

   1974, Timothy L[auro] S[quire] Sprigge, “[Santayana’s Ethical Theory] Reason”, in Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy (The Arguments of the Philosophers), London; Boston, Mass.: Routledge & Kegan Paul, →ISBN, page 208

   Synonyms: repel