obstinate

1. 1.

   persist stubbornly

   “he obstinates himself against all rational arguments”

   Broaderpersevere

Other forms of obstinate

past tense

obstinated·

present participle

obstinating·

third person

obstinates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about obstinate

What does obstinate mean?

obstinate means "tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in obstinate?

obstinate has 3 syllables: ob-sti-nate. The stress falls on "ob". In IPA it is /ˈɑbstənət/.

What is another word for obstinate?

Close synonyms include stubborn, unregenerate, cussed, obdurate, unrepentant. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is obstinate a common word?

obstinate is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.