Thread: abolish - repeal - revoke

Can you please help me distinguish between those words.

Well a good dictionary will be much better than my head, but off the top of it:
laws are repealed
rights or privileges are revoked
I'm not sure what is abolished - maybe practices (example - slavery).

Isn't 'repealed' the act of refusing the right occur in the first place. Whereas 'revoke' means it was at one point a right, but has been taken away again.
And 'abolished' sounds to me like the law itself is annulled, whereas the previous two words are rights on a case by case basis.

I feel sorry for you if you're in a position where you need to know the difference between these terms.
And sorry if I've failed to use simple enough language to be helpful to you anyway. Legal talk is always messy and full of rubbish.

Abolish: -vt- To do away with completely, put an end to, to make (a law, etc.) null and void

Repeal: -vt- 1. to withdraw officially or formally, revoke, cancel, annul 2. To call back (as from exile) -n- The act of repealing

Revoke: -vt- 1. To withdraw, repeal, rescind, cancel or annul 2: [Now rare] to recall - vi- [Card games] to fail to follow suit when required and able to do so, renege -n- [card games] the act or an instance of revoking

vt: verb transative vi: verb intransitive n: noun

Seems to me that the main definitions of Repeal and Revoke make them absolute synonyms

I may be wrong, but I usually "feel" repeal in a good sense and revoke in a bad sense. For example, "the king repealed the law on horse-owning." But "revoke" usually sounds like a right is being taken away, for example "they revoked our right to wear beards."

And here's what Lingvo says,

revoke [ ] 1. 1) а) отменять, аннулировать ( закон, приказ и т. п. ); отзывать, объявлять недействительным to revoke certificate — лишать сертификата Syn: void б) брать назад ( свои слова и т.п. ) 2) объявлять ренонс при наличии требуемой масти 2. 1) отозвание Syn: recall 2) ренонс при наличии требуемой масти

repeal [ ] 1. аннулирование, отмена ( закона, резолюции, приговора и т. п. ) 2. 1) аннулировать, отменять ( закон ) Syn: void 2) отказываться Syn: abandon , renounce

abolish [ ] 1) аннулировать, отменять, упразднять, объявлять недействительным to abolish colonialism — ликвидировать колониализм the movement to abolish child labour — движение за отмену детского труда 2) разрушать, разбивать, уничтожать Syn: destroy

Originally Posted by Pravit

" But "revoke" usually sounds like a right is being taken away, for example "they revoked our right to wear beards."

So, Pravster's harvesting a beard for the winter months, hey? A little worried are we?

Kalinka_vinnie;

Seems to me that the main definitions of Repeal and Revoke make them absolute synonyms

In the general sense, I think you're absolutely right. Even the dictionary can't seem to tell them apart. But, lawyers and judges may have their own meanings, like for the word insane. I don't really know if there's a difference in legal terms.

Hmph. A law is not revoked is it? A right or a privilege is. I might be wrong, but does anyone really disagree with what I said first time round?

I don't agree that repeal and revoke are genuine synonyms, because sometimes the difference in words is not in so much the intrinsic meaning as the connotation and the collocation. Dictionaries aren't always brilliant at illustrating this, although obviously good ones try by using examples.
I agree with Pravit's intuition about the relative connotations of repeal and revoke, but I think that's because we don't like to obey laws and we do like to have privileges

google - "law was repealed" - 13200 matches
google - "law was revoked" - 603 matches. I noticed that the first few matches formed part of the phrase "his licence to practice law was revoked", meaning in this case it was also a privilege and not a law that was revoked.