STUBBORNNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does stubbornness mean? 

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

1. the trait of being difficult to handle or overcome

2. resolute adherence to your own ideas or desires

  Familiarity information: STUBBORNNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STUBBORNNESS (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 ("stubbornness" is a kind of...):

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

Derivation:

stubborn (not responding to treatment)

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 ("stubbornness" 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 "stubbornness"):

impenitence; impenitency (the trait of refusing to repent)

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

Derivation:

stubborn (tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield)

 Context examples 

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To a certain extent she had found his clay plastic, then it had developed stubbornness, declining to be shaped in the image of her father or of Mr. Butler.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“For stubbornness won't do here,” said his sister “What it wants is, to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A personality disorder characterized by an indirect resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance; anger and opposition to authority and the expectations of others that is expressed covertly by obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, dawdling, forgetfulness, and intentional inefficiency.

(Passive-Aggressive Personality, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)