pertinacity
nounEtymology From Middle French pertinacité, from Old French pertinace (“obstinate, stubborn”).
1
Usually The state or characteristic of being pertinacious.
- 1846, Edgar Allen Poe, The Black Cat With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend.
- Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance.1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
- Synonyms
- pertinaciousness, resolve, stubbornness, tenacity