Obdurant

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Stubbornly resistant to change or persuasion; hardened against moral influence or appeals to compassion
2. Demonstrating an unwillingness to alter one's views or actions while remaining impervious to emotional influences or moral arguments
3. Refusing to be moved or softened by appeals or feelings and sticking firmly to a position

Etymology: Obdurant is a rare English adjective meaning "unwilling to change," and it comes straight from Latin. It descends from "obdurare," meaning "to harden" or "to persist stubbornly," built from the prefix "ob-" ("against" or "in the way of") and "durare" ("to last" or "to endure"). That same Latin verb gave English "endure" and "durable," so the core idea is a kind of hardness that resists being worn down. The word is an adjective formed from the Latin participle stem, and its sense has stayed close to that original image of something set hard against pressure. English has long had the more common synonym "obdurate," which shares the same Latin source, and "obdurant" is the less frequent variant of the pair. Both have been in use since the early modern period, though "obdurate" has always been far more widely recorded.

Synonyms: unyielding, stubborn, inflexible

Antonyms: yielding, flexible, compliant