Antipathy - how mad are you?

Today's word is ANTIPATHY (courtesy of Elevate).

The game was using the word to equal "hate". 

I thought ANTIPATHY was more ambivalent. (In fact, I may have thought the word WAS "ambivalent".) So we are going to see what the dictionaries have to say.

www.Dictionary.com     n. 1) a natural, basic, or habitual repugnance; aversion. 2) an instinctive contrariety or opposition of feeling.

www.Merriam-Webster.com n. (simple) a strong feeling of dislike.

www.TheFreeDictionary.com n. 1)extreme dislike; aversion or repugnance. 3) inherent incompatibility or inability to mix

They seem to agree there is some hatred involved - or at least, extreme dislike. I find it interesting that there is a sense that the discord comes from the nature of the two (objects, people, elements, etc.); that it is a behavior or response that is settled in so far it feels like it comes from the soul. 

So, I was wrong - and I was right, later, upon realizing I was thinking "ambivalent" when reading ANTIPATHY. Yay for dictionaries!

She was unaccustomed to the feeling of antipathy; ambivalence was her more usual response for people and things she disliked.