OBSTINACY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does obstinacy mean? 

• OBSTINACY (noun)
  The noun OBSTINACY has 2 senses:

1. the trait of being difficult to handle or overcome

2. resolute adherence to your own ideas or desires

  Familiarity information: OBSTINACY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OBSTINACY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The trait of being difficult to handle or overcome

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

mulishness; obstinacy; obstinance; stubbornness

Hypernyms ("obstinacy" is a kind of...):

intractability; intractableness (the trait of being hard to influence or control)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Resolute adherence to your own ideas or desires

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

bullheadedness; obstinacy; obstinance; pigheadedness; self-will; stubbornness

Hypernyms ("obstinacy" is a kind of...):

firmness; firmness of purpose; resoluteness; resolution; resolve (the trait of being resolute)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "obstinacy"):

impenitence; impenitency (the trait of refusing to repent)

intransigence; intransigency (the trait of being intransigent; stubbornly refusing to compromise)

 Context examples 

The sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Our conversation ran something like this: ‘You can do no good by this obstinacy.’

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Well may you wonder, Marianne," replied her brother, "at the obstinacy which could resist such arguments as these. Your exclamation is very natural."

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I fancy, Lizzy, that obstinacy is the real defect of his character, after all.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Hum... ha... well, if the boy held his tongue because he promised, and not from obstinacy, I'll forgive him.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Of all this the people are well apprised, and understand how far to carry their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is concerned.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

From the lower part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

To be called into notice in such a manner, to hear that it was but the prelude to something so infinitely worse, to be told that she must do what was so impossible as to act; and then to have the charge of obstinacy and ingratitude follow it, enforced with such a hint at the dependence of her situation, had been too distressing at the time to make the remembrance when she was alone much less so, especially with the superadded dread of what the morrow might produce in continuation of the subject.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)