Repealing

How to spell repealing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce repealing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does repealing mean?

1. verbOfficially revoking or cancelling a law, rule, or formal decision.

Repealing in a sentence

• The government is repealing the outdated tax legislation this session.

• Parliament is repealing the licensing restrictions that applied to small shops.

Where does repealing come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'repeal', which English took from Anglo-French repeler and Old French rapeler, meaning 'to call back' or 'to revoke'. That verb was built from the prefix re-, meaning 'back', joined to apeler, 'to call' or 'to appeal', which itself descends from the Latin appellare, 'to address' or 'to call upon'. The idea, then, is literally of calling a law back, summoning it home and cancelling it. English adopted the word in the 1300s, mainly in legal and parliamentary settings where statutes were undone. The same Old French apeler also gives us the modern word 'appeal', so 'repeal' and 'appeal' are linguistic cousins, which helps explain the single -e- before the -al, the spelling oddity to watch in 'repealing'.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• peal (to call, from Old French apeler)
• -ing (present participle)