resistless
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ɹɪˈzɪstləs/
  • (GA) IPA: /ɹəˈzɪstləs/
Adjective

resistless

  1. That cannot be resisted; irresistible. [from 16th c.]
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.1:
      His name was Talus, made of yron mould, / Immoveable, resistlesse, without end […]
    • 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: Printed by J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], OCLC 228732398 ↗, lines 415–420, page 83 ↗:
      Maſters commands come with a power reſiſtleſs / To ſuch as owe them abſolute ſubjection; / And for a life who will not change his purpoſe? / (So mutable are all the ways of men) / Yet this be ſure, in nothing to comply / Scandalous or forbidden in our Law.
    • 1794, William Blake, The Book of Urizen, 365-7,
      Delving earth in his resistless way, / Howling, the Child with fierce flames / Issu'd from Enitharmon.
    • 1818, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV,
      My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.
    • 1855, Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass, New York: The Modern Library, 1921, pp. 64-5,
      I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, / O despairer, here is my neck, / By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
    • 1889, Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “[Untitled poem] ↗”, in Sylvie and Bruno, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., OCLC 156194182 ↗:
      Is all our Life, then, but a dream / Seen faintly in the golden gleam / Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?
  2. Putting up no resistance; unresisting. [from 16th c.]



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