From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishreact against something phrasal verbREACTto show that you dislike someone else’s ideas or ways of doing something, by deliberately doing the opposite He reacted strongly against his religious upbringing. → react→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
react against • It was a revolution so decentralized and individualistic that there was nothing for the state to react against.• To understand the classicists it helps to have some understanding of what they were reacting against.• Unwin and Parker reacted against a Victorian excess of ornament, which required endless dusting by an army of servants.• Immunohistochemical staining using antiserum reacting against complement factor C3d was used to visualize neuritic plaques.• They reacted against factory-produced Victorian furniture with its frilly fretwork, clawed feet and laminated woods.• Chaim Soutine s Expressionism can partly be explained by his determination to react against it.• For rather similar reasons, Darwin reacted against Lamarck's idea that organisms have an inner drive to evolve greater complexity.• Rather than reacting against the political orientations of their families, they tend to extend the extremism of their families' views.reacted strongly• Sandra's father also reacted strongly.• He grabbed toys from other kids and reacted strongly to any sign of aggression from them.• More importantly, he had a metabolism which reacted strongly to crisis.• There is no doubt that part of the Catholic community in Britain reacted strongly to the destruction and damage of Catholic churches.• Shares in privatised companies reacted strongly to the possibility of a Tory-dominated hung Parliament. 