To repeal a law means to officially cancel it or make it no longer valid. When a government repeals a law, that law stops being enforced and people no longer have to follow it.

Think of it like erasing a rule from the rulebook. If your school had a rule requiring uniforms but then decided to repeal it, students could wear regular clothes again. The rule wouldn't just be ignored: it would be formally removed from the school's official policies.

In American history, one famous example is the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. For thirteen years, a constitutional amendment had made it illegal to make or sell alcohol in the United States. When the government repealed that amendment, those activities became legal again. The law didn't fade away or get forgotten. It was deliberately and officially removed.

Repeal is different from simply not enforcing a law. A repealed law is gone, while an unenforced law technically still exists. When legislators repeal a law, they're making a formal decision that the law is wrong, unnecessary, or no longer useful. It takes the same kind of official action to repeal a law as it took to create it in the first place.