oppress

From Middle English oppressen, from Old French oppresser, from Medieval Latin oppressare (“to press against, oppress”), frequentative of Latin opprimere, past participle oppressus (“to press against, press together, oppress”), from ob (“against”) + premere, past participle pressus (“to press”); see press.

• IPA^(key): /əˈpɹɛs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛs
• Hyphenation: op‧press

oppress (third-person singular simple present oppresses, present participle oppressing, simple past and past participle oppressed)

1. (transitive) To keep down by unjust force.

   Synonym: suppress

   The rural poor were oppressed by the land-owners.

2. (transitive) To make sad or gloomy.

   Synonyms: begloom, get down; see also Thesaurus:sadden

   We were oppressed by the constant grey skies.

3. (transitive, obsolete) Physically to press down on (someone) with harmful effects; to smother, crush.

   Synonyms: depress, downbear, squash

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Most mercilesse of women, VVyden hight, / Her other sonne fast sleeping did oppresse, / And with most cruell hand him murdred pittilesse.

4. (transitive, obsolete) To sexually violate; to rape.

   Synonyms: outrage, violate, vitiate

• oppression
• oppressive

• “oppress”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “oppress”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

• porpess, soppers