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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Resistant to physical pressure; not pliant.
  2. adj. Reluctant to yield or be swayed; recalcitrant.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Resisting pressure or the effect of it; acting against impulse by elastic force.
  2. Persistently opposing.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. resistant to physical pressure; unyielding
  2. adj. resistant to compulsion; recalcitrant

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Resisting pressure or the effect of it; acting against impulse by elastic force.
  2. adj. Persistently opposed.

Etymologies

  1. Latin renītēns, renītent-, present participle of renītī, to resist : re-, re- + nītī, to press forward.

Examples

  • “My eyes had grown so used to the dark in those watches of wandering through the entrails of the ship that, faint though the gleam shone, I could see the renitent surface under my feet and the mossy walls about me; I sheathed my knife then, and ran.”

    The Urth of the New Sun

  • “The gruesome deaths of the five Foke jarred him into the itchy, gummy, renitent physicality of his body.”

    In Other Worlds

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  • mialuthien renitent – resisting physical pressure; resisting constraint or compulsion: recalcitrant Jul 25, 2008

‘renitent’ has been looked up 627 times, added to 7 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 8.