Sunday Word: Recalcitrant

[sallymn]

recalcitrant [ri-kal-si-truhnt]

adjective:
1 resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant; refractory.
2 hard to deal with, manage, or operate.

Examples:

But Smith managed to rally and to learn, through trial and error, how to milk what he needed out of an often recalcitrant medical system. (Gina Kolata, Taking Charge, The New York Times, September 1997)

With the passage of decades, facts are difficult to unearth, and emotions and motivations are even more recalcitrant. (Julia M Klein, What to do when family history is radioactive? Work around stonewalling relatives, Los Angeles Times, August2021)

The new Cabinet had to deal with religious conflict, refugee flight, food scarcities, recalcitrant princely states, and oversee the framing of a new Constitution. (Ramachandra Guha, Shed partisanship, reach out to the best minds, Hindustan Times, April 2020)

She greeted him now as though he were a recalcitrant member of the family, rather than a menacing outsider. (F Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited)

Origin:

'refusing to submit, not submissive or compliant,' 1823, from French récalcitrant, literally 'kicking back' (17c-18c), from Late Latin recalcitrantem (nominative recalcitrans), present participle of recalcitrare 'to kick back' (of horses), also 'be inaccessible,' in Late Latin 'to be petulant or disobedient;' from re- 'back' (see re-) + Latin calcitrare 'to kick,' from calx (genitive calcis) 'heel'. Used from 1797 as a French word in English. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Long before any human was dubbed 'recalcitrant' in English (that first occurred in the 18th century), there were stubborn mules (and horses) kicking back their heels. The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it: recalcitrare, which literally means 'to kick back.' (Its root calc-, meaning 'heel,' is also the root of calcaneus, the large bone of the heel in humans.) Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded - as attested by various Latin words meaning 'stubborn' - but it wasn't until later that writers of Late Latin applied recalcitrare and its derivative adjective to humans who were stubborn as mules. (Merriam-Webster)