What's the difference between obstinacy and stubbornness?

Obstinacy


Definition:

  • (n.) A fixedness in will, opinion, or resolution that can not be shaken at all, or only with great difficulty; firm and usually unreasonable adherence to an opinion, purpose, or system; unyielding disposition; stubborness; pertinacity; persistency; contumacy.
  • (n.) The quality or state of being difficult to remedy, relieve, or subdue; as, the obstinacy of a disease or evil.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The individual number of pathological scores showed a decrease already within the first treatment week and a further decrease by the end of the trial, especially for the items of capriciousness, obstinacy, irritability and restlessness.
  • (2) Early on in the sessions for Five Leaves Left, Boyd discovered that Drake's silence served at times to conceal his deep-rooted obstinacy.
  • (3) Rather than obstinacy, we were suddenly met with a guarded kind of openness.
  • (4) From the early 1980s onwards, Margaret Thatcher and her governments embedded a new notion in the collective Tory mind, and British politics more widely: that politicians should be judged by their radicalism and obstinacy.
  • (5) I finally pull the tire off, and I look at the inside of the tire, and it reads: ‘Matsumoto Tire Company – We Are Obstinacy!’” I mention the tire, because it illuminates the experience of reading Paul Ryan’s brand-new don’t-call-it-a-campaign book, The Way Forward: an hours-long ordeal with an epistemically locked-shut Mad Libs thesaurus accident that ultimately says “screw you” as sunnily as possible.
  • (6) After all, unchecked obstinacy in the face of demands for change risks bringing down not just individual pillars of the establishment, but the entire system of power with them.
  • (7) The decline in shipbuilding here had its roots in poor management stretching back to the late 19th century, trade union obstinacy, and the rise after two world wars of foreign rivals who could produce much bigger ships more efficiently.
  • (8) A tireless fighter against apartheid, he defeated it with his courage, his obstinacy and his perseverance.
  • (9) Several US officials involved in Guantánamo issues saw Kelly’s hand in Pentagon obstinacy toward Obama’s plan to close the detention facility.
  • (10) "The reason why Osborne and Cable are tinkering at the edges and pressing the governor to take action is because their own political obstinacy and vanity is getting in the way of the need for fiscal action.
  • (11) Sharif's obstinacy in the face of army demands for North Waziristan to be dealt with before summer has exacerbated tensions between Pakistan's civilian and military leaderships, who have clashed over the treason trial of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
  • (12) After Mr Obama’s lofty rhetoric ran up against the immovable obstinacy of an entrenched Republican-majority Congress, America may be ready for leadership by prose rather than through poetry.
  • (13) His obstinacy did not go down well with the committee, which had after all summoned him to shake an opinion out of him.
  • (14) The patient's wish or that of his companion are not sufficient, nor the lack of will or obstinacy.
  • (15) The grassroots movement to break away from Spain has strengthened alongside the obstinacy of the central government: while in 2010 one-fifth of Catalans supported independence, by 2013 the number hovered around half, according to Catalonia’s Centre for Opinion Studies.
  • (16) The consequences of the UK offering less than permanent protection of all the rights currently enjoyed by EU nationals, however, could lead to reciprocal obstinacy, including the deprivation of the rights of elderly Britons in Spain to free healthcare, one official warned.
  • (17) But "the impartial – UN operation in Ivory Coast and French – forces did African democracy a great service … by ousting a man who ... would only listen to his own obstinacy," Le Pays continued.
  • (18) In fact, they are simply imploding under the weight of their own obstinacy.
  • (19) It is the most egregious in terms of the length of time, concerns about his safety due to [previous] torture and the obstinacy of the Chinese government in refusing to provide any details."
  • (20) But the chicken-shop phenomenon is also about the glorious obstinacy of teenagers expressing their freedom through what little economic power they have.

Stubbornness


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It has announced a four-stage programme of reforms that will tackle most of these stubborn and longstanding problems, including Cinderella issues such as how energy companies treat their small business customers.
  • (2) Of course there are some who are stubborn, like Robert Mugabe.
  • (3) The prime minister insisted, however, that he and other world leaders were not being stubborn over demands that the Syrian leader, President Bashar al-Assad, step down at the end of the peace process.
  • (4) It’s clear their relationship is most similar to that of a stubborn son and his long suffering mother.
  • (5) The contrast between these two worlds – one legal and flourishing, the other illegal and stubbornly disregarding of state lines – can seem baffling, yet it may have profound consequences for whether this unique experiment spreads.
  • (6) The causes of failure after acute injury include extensive local soft tissue and bony damage, severe concomitant head, chest or abdominal wounding, stubborn reliance on negative arteriograms in patients with probable arterial injury, failure to repair simultaneous venous injuries, or harvesting of a vein graft from a severely damaged extremity.
  • (7) "It was the character of David Cameron – his stubbornness, his anger and his rush towards war – which was the central cause of his defeat on Thursday night."
  • (8) Rebus, promised the Scottish author, will be "as stubborn and anarchic as ever", and will find himself in trouble with the author's latest creation, Malcolm Fox, of Edinburgh's internal affairs unit.
  • (9) A rising jobless total and an unemployment rate sticking at a stubbornly high 8% overshadowed a better than expected 27,100 fall in the claimant count in April, which compared with analysts' forecasts for a 20,000 drop.
  • (10) But the part of me that resists that, that is stubborn and wants to bulldoze things, gets in my way.
  • (11) One is the stubborn mystery of how a giant of its liberation movements, an intellectual who showed forgiveness and magnanimity years before Mandela emerged from jail, could turn into the living caricature of despotism.
  • (12) Sanctioning is no longer a last resort tactic aimed at the stubbornly workshy, say critics, but a crude way of pushing down claimant numbers and cutting back on the benefits bill.
  • (13) He was only 29 at the time, but nevertheless had that kind of stubborn certainty.
  • (14) They have a sort of stubbornness.” He later deals with hecklers at a Fifa HQ press event : “Listen, gentlemen, we are not in a bazaar .
  • (15) Dombrovskis stubbornly refused, instead pursuing "internal devaluation", depressing wages and conducting what he says was a 17% fiscal adjustment programme (the IMF says 15%).
  • (16) They formed a stubborn line in front of Wojciech Szczesny’s goal even if the statistics showed Arsenal’s pass-completion rate went down from 89% in the first half to 66% in the second.
  • (17) This was the first time a grouping of BME senior managers crossing health and social care had met together to look at barriers to gaining top jobs, and ways of breaking through systems which stubbornly never seem to shift.
  • (18) Broadly defined, this sort of behaviour involves procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, obstructionism, self-pity and a tendency to create chaotic situations.
  • (19) At which point – obviously – you reach the stubborn limits of the debate: from even the most supposedly imaginative Labour people as much as any Tories, such heresies would presumably be greeted with sneering derision.
  • (20) A stubborn negativity characterised the insurrection.