AVERSE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does averse mean? 

• AVERSE (adjective)
  The adjective AVERSE has 1 sense:

1. (usually followed by 'to') strongly opposed

  Familiarity information: AVERSE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AVERSE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(usually followed by 'to') strongly opposed

Synonyms:

antipathetic; antipathetical; averse; indisposed; loath; loth

Context example:

clearly indisposed to grant their request

Similar:

disinclined (unwilling because of mild dislike or disapproval)

 Context examples 

Besides, she had been studying heavily at the university, and he felt averse to robbing her of her time.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You are not averse to this trip, Watson?

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action, unless upon the utmost necessity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

My father’s age rendered him extremely averse to delay.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The team found that phosphine cannot be produced in any other way except by these extreme, oxygen-averse organisms, making phosphine a pure biosignature—a sign of life (at least of a certain kind).

(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I should not have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I detected trouble, and calculation relative to the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber's eye.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And he was never averse to another encounter.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Heavy-game shots liked to be in a position to cap the tales of their rivals, and journalists were not averse from sensational coups, even when imagination had to aid fact in the process.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)