Word of the Day

Saturday September 12, 2009

recalcitrant [rih-KAL-sih-truhnt]

adjective

Stubbornly resistant to control or authority.

"He was a recalcitrant child," said niece Edith Solomon, who cared for her uncle in the last years of his life. "You couldn't control him. You couldn't tell him what to do." "He'd say, 'You're so pretty, I'd like to put you in a sugar sack and make a cake out of you,'" his niece recalled.

Andrew Meacham, "He drove the stars, overcame racism”, St. Petersburg Times, Jul 29, 2009
Brandon Marshall is one unhappy camper. The recalcitrant Pro Bowl receiver reported to the first day of the Denver Broncos' training camp on Monday after skipping all offseason workouts while rehabbing from a hip operation and protesting his contract and what he feels was a misdiagnosis of his injury by the team's medical staff.

Anonymous "NFL Marshall just wants to be happy Disgruntled receiver reports for Broncos camp", Houston Chronicle, Jul 28, 2009
There was an air of keen resolution in Miss Ruck's pretty face, of lucid apprehension of desirable ends, which made me, as she pronounced these words, direct a glance of covert compassion toward her poor recalcitrant father.

Henry James (1843 - 1916) A U.S.-born British author. The Pension Beaurepas (1883)

Origin of the Word

Recalcitrant, approximately 1843, derives from French recalcitrant, literally "kicking back", past participle of recalcitrare "to kick back," from re- "back" + Latin calcitrare "to kick," from calx, "heel."