Intransigent

Word of the Day for Saturday April 30, 2005

intransigent \in-TRAN-suh-juhnt; -zuh-\, adjective:
Refusing to compromise; uncompromising.

He was intransigent at times, and almost playfully yielding at others.
--"The Decline and Fall of a Sure Thing," New York Times, September 10, 1989

Sometimes I was intransigent, and proud of it. At other times I seemed to myself to be nearly devoid of any character at all, timid, uncertain, without will.
--Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

The dispute brewed through the summer as Nehru remained intransigent and U.S. officials confronted an unbending legal mandate.
--George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb


Intransigent is from French intransigeant, from Spanish intransigente, from in-, "not" (from Latin) + transigente, present participle of transigir, "to compromise," from Latin transigere, "to come to an agreement," from trans-, "across" + agere, "to drive."
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