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Definition of repressive : Having power, or tending, to repress; as, repressive acts or measures.

Synonyms:

severe, autocratic, restraint, inhibitory, attack, repressing, difficult, restrictive, inhibiting, authoritarian, suppressive

Usage examples:

• This was the curfew law, which it has been the custom to regard as a repressive measure adopted by the tyrant Conqueror to prevent seditious meetings of the turbulent Saxons. - "Old Church Lore", William Andrews.
• When the minister is neither seduced nor deceived, when he yields not to private passion, to blind prepossession, to misplaced severity, his object is frequently to get rid of a disturber of the public peace; and the police, in the manner in which the machine is set up, could not proceed, at the present day, without this quick, active, and repressive power. - "Paris As It Was and As It Is", Francis W. Blagdon.
• Repressive measures and the imprisonment of Gandhi checked the non- cooperation movement during the present war, at least temporarily. - "Introduction to Non-Violence", Theodore Paullin.