| \OB-doo-rit, -dyoo-\ | adjective
1. unmoved by persuasion, pity, or tender feelings; stubborn; unyielding.
2. stubbornly resistant to moral influence; persistently impenitent: an obdurate sinner.
| | Quotes | Still, Michael was unforgiving. Stubborn as a balking goat. When, after they'd become engaged, Corinne had wanted to see her friend one final time to explain what had happened, Michael was obdurate in opposition: no.
-- Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys, 1996 | | | | | | | | | | Origin of obdurate | | Obdurate comes from the past participle of the Latin verb obdūrāre, a derivative of the the adjective dūrus "hard." In Classical Latin obdurare meant "to harden, be hard," and also "to hold out, endure." In Late and Christian Latin, the verb meant "to harden the heart (against truth or God)." It entered English in the mid-1400s. | |
