What's the difference between attract and repel?

Attract


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To draw to, or cause to tend to; esp. to cause to approach, adhere, or combine; or to cause to resist divulsion, separation, or decomposition.
  • (v. t.) To draw by influence of a moral or emotional kind; to engage or fix, as the mind, attention, etc.; to invite or allure; as, to attract admirers.
  • (n.) Attraction.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Osteoporosis and its treatment have attracted much attention in recent years, especially since the widespread recognition of its association with the menopause.
  • (2) The last stems from trends such as declining birth rate, an increasingly mobile society, diminished importance of the nuclear family, and the diminishing attractiveness of professions involved with providing maintenance care.
  • (3) In view of many ethical and legal problems, connected in some countries with obtaining human fetal tissue for transplantation, cross-species transplants would be an attractive alternative.
  • (4) So I am, of course, intrigued about the city’s newest tourist attraction: a hangover bar, open at weekends, in which sufferers can come in and have a bit of a lie down in soothingly subdued lighting, while sipping vitamin-enriched smoothies.
  • (5) Older women and those who present more archetypically as butch have an easier time of it (because older women in general are often sidelined by the press and society) and because butch women are often viewed as less attractive and tantalising to male editors and readers.
  • (6) Synthetic N-formylmethionyl peptides are chemotactic attractants for human polymorphonuclear leukocytes.
  • (7) The Chinese model of development, which combines political repression and economic liberalism, has attracted numerous admirers in the developing world.
  • (8) But with the advantages and attractions that Scotland already has, and, more importantly, taking into account the morale boost, the sheer energisation of a whole people that would come about because we would finally have our destiny at least largely back in our own hands again – I think we could do it.
  • (9) A viral aetiology for this group of diseases remains an attractive but unsubstantiated hypothesis.
  • (10) The strongest field distortions and attractive forces occurred with 17-7PH stainless steel clips.
  • (11) Bar manager Joe Mattheisen, 66, who has worked at the hole-in-the-wall bar since 1997, said the bar has attracted younger, straighter crowds in recent years.
  • (12) As for fish attractiveness, motion, freshness, size, color and species were found as important parameters in the food-preference mechanism.
  • (13) "That attracted all the wrong sorts for a few years, so the clubs put their prices up to keep them out and the prices never came down again."
  • (14) His coding talent attracted attention early: a music-recommendation program he wrote as a teenager brought approaches from both Microsoft and AOL.
  • (15) In a BBC Radio 4 performance that attempts to underline his status as a normal bloke – although he admits he was too "square" to attract a girlfriend at university – Miliband's luxury item is a weekly chicken tikka masala from his local north London Indian takeaway.
  • (16) But it has already attracted attention for paying some deferred bonuses early in the US to avoid a hike in tax rates.
  • (17) Cuadrilla's admission comes after more than a fortnight's protests at the Balcombe site, which have attracted international attention.
  • (18) Although selenium deficiency in livestock is consequently now rare in Oregon, selenium-deficient soils and attendant selenium deficiency conditions have been reported near the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in the Northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, California, where, paradoxically, selenium toxicity in wildfowl, nesting near evaporation ponds, occurred and attracted wide attention.
  • (19) It has been a place of pilgrimage for many centuries and a tourist attraction probably since Roman times.
  • (20) A nine-year-old Scottish girl who attracted two million readers to a blog documenting her school lunches , consisting of unappealing and unhealthy dishes served up to pupils, has been forced to end the project after the council banned her from taking pictures of the food in school.

Repel


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To drive back; to force to return; to check the advance of; to repulse as, to repel an enemy or an assailant.
  • (v. t.) To resist or oppose effectually; as, to repel an assault, an encroachment, or an argument.
  • (v. i.) To act with force in opposition to force impressed; to exercise repulsion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The effects of common repellents on the membrane fluidity of Escherichia coli were measured by the fluorescence polarization of the probe 1,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-hexatriene in liposomes made of lipids extracted from the bacteria and in membrane vesicles.
  • (2) It is suggested that the capacity of large doses of L3T4+ cells to protect mice against lethal GVHD is a reflection of T helper function: the cellular immunity provided by the donor L3T4+ cells enables the host to repel pathogens entering through damaged mucosal surfaces, with the result that GVHD becomes sublethal.
  • (3) Repellent effect of the Mannich bases (methoxyphenol derivatives) on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and Xenopsylla cheopis fleas was revealed under laboratory and field conditions.
  • (4) We have recently prepared a carbon fibre micro-electrode (mCFE) which specifically pretreated and coated with Nafion (a negatively charged polymer which repels acids such as 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC)) allows the direct selective detection of the oxidation of DA and 5-HT in nanomolar concentration in vitro and that of extracellular basal levels of cerebral 5-HT in vivo (peak B at +240 mV).
  • (5) A couple of years later, he patented a method of producing a water-repellent textile.
  • (6) These compounds possess insecticidal and repellent properties.
  • (7) Tory toffs repelling undesirable immigrants, providing better schools, using welfare reform as a pathway to work, clearing vandals, yobs and drunks from the streets and standing up to our masters in Brussels would be very popular, and the word would soon be forgotten.
  • (8) Repellent addition has previously been shown to stimulate MCP demethylation.
  • (9) Of 33 compounds tested, 8 were repellents for B. bacteriovorus strain UKi2: n-caproate, alanine, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, cobaltous chloride, and hydronium ion.
  • (10) The CDC and other health agencies have been operating for months on the assumption that Zika causes brain defects, and they have been warning pregnant women to use mosquito repellent, avoid travel to Zika-stricken regions and either abstain from sex or rely on condoms.
  • (11) But maybe, just maybe, they won’t, for they represent real forces and articulate real passions that Labour and the Conservatives, and now the Lib Dems, have so far utterly failed to repel.
  • (12) The treatment involved the use of repelling magnets for the distalization of the upper right molar which was in a class II relationship.
  • (13) The most important stabilizing factor for the intramolecular proton transfer is the zinc ion, which lowers the pKa of zinc-bound water and electrostatically repels the proton.
  • (14) Both sexes were attracted to the odor of R-(-)-carvone and repelled by the odor of (+)-citronellol.
  • (15) The paint whooshed down through the freshwater, but as soon as it hit the saltwater it was repelled, spreading out laterally as if the pigment had hit an invisible horizon.
  • (16) In bacterial chemotaxis, transmembrane receptor proteins detect attractants and repellents in the medium and send intracellular signals that control motility.
  • (17) Iain Lobban, the director of GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping and encrypting agency, last week used his first public speech to call for an aggressive approach to cyber attacks, and warned of the dangers of adopting the sort of defensive strategy famously symbolised by France's Maginot line, which was meant to repel the Germans and failed.
  • (18) 7.53pm BST Pedant repellant Style guide: GEORGE: What is Holland?
  • (19) Current control measures, stressing the use of mosquito nets, insect repellent, and residual insecticides designed primarily for the less mobile population of rice-farming communities are less effective among more mobile people.
  • (20) Soldiers damaged three of the vessels before clashes in which the militants were eventually repelled.