Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Firm in asserting a demand or an opinion; unyielding.
  • adjective Demanding attention or a response.
  • adjective Repetitive and persistent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Standing or resting on something.
  • Urgent in dwelling upon anything; persistent in urging or maintaining.
  • Hence Extorting attention or notice; coercively staring or prominent; vivid; intense.
  • In ornithology, standing on end: specifically said of the hind toe of a bird when its base is inserted so high on the shank that only its tip touches the ground: correlated with incumbent.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Standing or resting on something.
  • adjective Insisting; persistent; persevering.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) See Incumbent.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete Standing or resting on something.
  • adjective Urgent in dwelling upon anything; persistent in urging or maintaining.
  • adjective Extorting attention or notice; coercively staring or prominent; vivid; intense.
  • adjective ornithology Standing on end: specifically said of the hind toe of a bird when its base is inserted so high on the shank that only its tip touches the ground: correlated with incumbent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective demanding attention
  • adjective repetitive and persistent

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin insistens, participle of insisto.

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Examples

  • But Baldovino stood in front of him, his expression insistent.

    The Big Scam Paul Lindsay 2005

  • The hostile Cylon, who remain insistent on pressing the attack against the Colonials, have lost their most important strategic asset as a result.

    Chaos Or Community | ATTACKERMAN 2009

  • Schiller: the aesthetic, in other words, is insistent from the beginning.

    Introduction: 'The Power is There': Romanticism as Aesthetic Insistence 2005

  • No guitars to hold it together, no massive keyboard riffs, just these thin insistent pulses with flurries of sound on the sides.

    A Question Of Blown Minds 2003

  • The BBC's response to this is that their requests to check the footage were not 'insistent' enough

    The BBC Must Take Full Responsibility 2007

  • Sometimes Hofmann seems to nudge Roth in a direction in which Roth is not actually going: the pressure of a man's fingers on a girl's arm is "insistent" when in the original it is merely soft.

    Emperor of Nostalgia Coetzee, J.M. 2002

  • These were the Marshall Plan days, which sadly ended in the '70s, and the US became even more kind of insistent on pushing these wrong policies on the developing countries and some other countries.

    Democracy Now! 2009

  • These were the Marshall Plan days, which sadly ended in the '70s, and the US became even more kind of insistent on pushing these wrong policies on the developing countries and some other countries.

    Democracy Now! 2009

  • These were the Marshall Plan days, which sadly ended in the '70s, and the US became even more kind of insistent on pushing these wrong policies on the developing countries and some other countries.

    Democracy Now! 2009

  • "insistent" that the products be manufactured by Standard Candy according to the new formula, and agreed to take the risk of negative outcomes, says the suit.

    FoodNavigator-USA RSS 2009

Comments

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  • "Even though 130 lb is the maximum per quadrant you can also plant less. For insistent you plan to harvest and ship 120 lb on Monday, 90 lb on Tuesday, and 75 lb on Wednesday etc. you can do this."

    - sales pitch for sprouting machine.

    March 26, 2008

  • "4. In ornithology, standing on end: specifically said of the hind toe of a bird when its base is inserted so high on the shank that only its tip touches the ground: correlated with incumbent."

    --Century Dictionary

    March 9, 2011