Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday September 29, 1999
obdurate \OB-duh-rit; -dyuh-\ , adjective:
1. Hardened in wrongdoing; stubbornly wicked. Hardened in feelings; hard-hearted.
2. Resistant to persuasion; unyielding.
3. Hard; harsh; rugged; rough.
The obdurate conscience of the old sinner.
-- Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
The King appearing obdurate, she abandons her plea.
-- Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses
My chronic nastiness and obdurate refusal to look on the bright side of things goes far beyond garden-variety misanthropy.
-- Joe Queenan, My Goodness
To remain obdurate before authority, to display one's loyalty to the collective, to be a zealous student wholeheartedly eager to deepen one's grasp of doctrine--these were qualities that bore witness precisely to the personal, to the individual.
-- Milovan Djilas, Fall of the New Class
The root system that supports such irrepressibleness appears confined to five inches of soil between scrubby trees and obdurate stone.
-- Mary Parker Buckles, Margins: A Naturalist Meets Long Island Sound
Obdurate derives from the past participle of Latin obdurare, "to be hard against," from ob-, "against" + durus, "hard."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for obdurate
