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Nov 14, 2007

This week's theme
Words to describe people

This week's words
mystagogue
patrician
recalcitrant
platitudinarian
macroscian

“Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.” ~Emerson
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recalcitrant

adjective: Stubbornly resistant to authority.

[From Latin recalcitrare (to kick back, to be disobedient), from re- (again) + calcitrare (to kick), from calx (heel). If you have a dog that has dug his heels in while you're trying to pull him forward, you have a case of an animal that's being recalcitrant, literally.]

"Mount Kelut has been on high alert for more than two weeks but activity escalated dramatically on Friday, triggering fresh rounds of evacuations carried out by troops and local officials. On Saturday, some recalcitrant residents were dragged from their homes."
Indonesia's Mount Kelut Erupts; Agence France-Presse; Nov 3, 2007.

See more usage examples of recalcitrant in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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