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Saturday April 30, 2005

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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."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for intransigent

 

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