Following Consentino (2006):

…The terms “water repellence”, “wettability”, “rate of wetting”, “rate of water sorption” and “hydrophobicity” are currently use in soil scientific bibliography as a synonyms. However, we suggest that the word “hydrophobicity” would be reserved specifically to the property of the surface of soil solids. Thus, measurements of solid water-air contact angles or the ones that can cancel the effect of the pore system refer to “hydrophobicity”. Thereby, a highly hydrophobic soil will have a low rate of wetting but the contrary will not be necessarily true…

The word derives from the verb “to repel”, which according to Oxford Dictionary is derived from the Latin word, “repelleree”, meaning push back or out. Other meanings include, counter, renounce, refuse.

Thus, this word refers to a force or action that does not allow the union of objects. The term repellency is correctly used, for example, by Lewis in his theory on the atomic structure in which each pair of points around the main or central atom represents the pairs of valence electron which occupy an orbital of each atom. As the electronic pairs repel each other due to their charges (positive in the nucleus and negative in the electrons), the more stable arrangement pair is one where electronic repulsions between the pairs is the least possible.

Faraday also introduced another model to explain forces of repulsion or attraction. He envisioned that the electric charges and magnets should create, in their neighborhood, a kind of field, invisible, odorless and imperceptible to touch. The attraction or repulsion of other charges would depend on the nature of the electric field, knowing that charges of opposite signs attract and same sign repel. In both cases, it became clear the existence of a repellent action which in this case is called electrostatic force which does not allow the mixture or combination of substances or objects.

However, in soils, there is no force preventing the mixture of water and soil particles, as the character is not permanent and there is a constant change in time and space, because a situation in which the soil is moistened, attractive forces between the water and soil may not appear and the inference is water repellent in theory and when opposite situation occurs, water and soil particles are considered to be attractive and hence, no water repellency.

In physical chemistry theory, when there is no repulsion, there is attraction. So, repellent soils were not considered attractive to water, which sounds so contradictory and at odds with this acquired knowledge about soil water dynamics. What exists in reality is a temporary and reversible immiscibility. Miscibility is defined as the ability of a liquid to mixed and form a homogeneous system, or dissolved in another liquid. In this case, generally it is considered a property as the mutual miscibility between the two liquids in the system.

Considering the above arguments, I prefer use the terms "hydrophobic" and "hydrophilic" if not repellent.