Pronunciation Adjective
obdurate
- Stubbornly persistent, generally in wrongdoing; refusing to reform or repent.
- 1593, Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I:
- ... sometimes the very custom of evil making the heart obdurate against whatsoever instructions to the contrary ...
- 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act I, sc. 4:
- Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel,
- Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth?
- 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 56–8
- ... round he throws his baleful eyes
- That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
- Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
- 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley,"The Revolt of Islam", canto 4, stanza 9, lines 1486-7:
- But custom maketh blind and obdurate
- The loftiest hearts.
- 1593, Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I:
- (obsolete) Physically hardened, toughened.
- Hardened against feeling; hard-hearted.
- 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 13:
- I fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were addressed was rather an obdurate critic.
- 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 13:
- (stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing): hardened, hard-hearted, impertinent, intractable, unrepentant, unyielding, recalcitrant
- French: dur comme un roc
- Russian: закалённый
obdurate (obdurates, present participle obdurating; past and past participle obdurated)
- (transitive, obsolete) To harden; to obdure.
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