obdurate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English obdurat,^[2][3][4][5] borrowed from Late Latin obdūrātus (“hardened, hardened in heart”),^[6][2] the past participle of obdūrō (“to harden”),^{[6][7][8][9][10]} from ob- and dūrō (“to harden”),^[6][7][8][9] from dūrus (“hard”),^[7][3][11] from Proto-Indo-European *deru- (“to be firm, solid, steadfast”).^[7][2] The prefix is glossed "against" by Barnhart and Etymonline^[8][7] and "in opposition" by the Oxford Dictionary of English,^[11] and is called intensive by the American Heritage Dictionary and Collins.^[2][12] The Latin verb was used specifically of hardening the heart against God.^[6][7] The OED compares Italian obdurato, recorded before 1342.^[6] The obsolete verb is partly from the past-participial stem of that verb and partly from the adjective.^[6][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Hardened in sin, stubbornly impenitent: about 1450, in Jacob's Well.^[6][8] Etymonline dates it to the mid-15th century^[7] and Dictionary.com to 1400–50.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The religious sense gave way to a more general one: the OED marks "hardened in wrongdoing" obsolete after 1830, while "hardened against persuasion, entreaty or pity" runs from 1590, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, to the present.^[6] Johnson (1755) still defines the word as hard of heart and obstinate in wrongdoing.^[14] From 1651 it could also describe a thing or phenomenon resistant to human effort.^[6] The literal sense "physically hard" appears in a surgical translation of 1598 and is now rare,^[6] and "harsh to the senses" was used from 1647 to 1854.^[6] The noun the obdurate, obstinate people as a class, dates from before 1665,^[6] and the verb "to harden", from before 1540, was obsolete by 1860.^[6] The noun obduracy first appears in Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV (1597).^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – hardened in sin, impenitent.^[6][8]
• before 1540 – verb, to make obdurate, to harden in wickedness (obsolete by 1860).^[6]
• 1590 – hardened against persuasion or pity, unyielding.^[6]
• 1597 – the noun obduracy.^[8]
• 1598 – physically hard.^[6]
• 1647 – harsh to the senses (obsolete by 1854).^[6]
• 1651 – of a thing, resistant or intractable.^[6]
• before 1665 – noun, the obdurate, obstinate people.^[6]
• 1687 – noun, a stubbornly unyielding person (obsolete by 1889).^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Resistant to persuasion or to softening influences; stubborn and unyielding: The landlord remained obdurate despite the tenants' pleas.^[4][12][6]
2. Hardened in feeling, especially against moral influence; persisting in wrongdoing.^[4][12]
3. Of a thing, resistant to human effort; intractable.^[6]
4. (rare) Physically hard.^[6]

Noun

1. the obdurate: obstinate or unyielding people as a class.^[6]

Verb

1. (obsolete, 1540–1860) To make obdurate; to harden in wrongdoing.^[6][4][13]

Word family

• obdurately
• obdurateness
• unobdurate
• obduracy

Related words

• durable
• during
• duration
• endure
• endurance
• enduring
• dure
• indurate

Usage notes

The usual stress is now on the first syllable.^[6][12] The OED notes that second-syllable stress is recorded by the Jones pronouncing dictionary up to its 14th edition (1977) and by Webster (1934) as common in poetry;^[6] Merriam-Webster still gives it.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.