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RELUCTANCE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A certain degree of unwillingness
Example:
after some hesitation he agreed
Synonyms:
disinclination; hesitancy; hesitation; indisposition; reluctance
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("reluctance" is a kind of...):
involuntariness; unwillingness (the trait of being unwilling)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "reluctance"):
sloth; slothfulness (a disinclination to work or exert yourself)
Derivation:
reluctant (not eager)
reluctant (disinclined to become involved)
reluctant (unwillingness to do something contrary to your custom)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(physics) opposition to magnetic flux (analogous to electric resistance)
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural phenomena
Hypernyms ("reluctance" is a kind of...):
electrical phenomenon (a physical phenomenon involving electricity)
Domain category:
natural philosophy; physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions)
Context examples:
It was impossible to help laughing at the funny conflict between Laurie's chivalrous reluctance to speak ill of womankind, and his very natural dislike of the unfeminine folly of which fashionable society showed him many samples.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
I overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives—a reluctance which extends even to talk upon the subject—and by judicious persuasion and gifts, aided, I will admit, by some threats of coercion, I got two of them to act as guides.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
They discovered that despite the rarity of hybrid butterflies – as a result of their reluctance to mate with one another – a surprisingly large amount of DNA has been shared between the species through hybridisation.
(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)
Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Fanny found herself obliged to yield, that she might not be accused of pride or indifference, or some other littleness; and having with modest reluctance given her consent, proceeded to make the selection.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Some scruples and some reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the care and the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Elinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore at an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for nothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other less than they had done before; and Elinor sat down to the card table with the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere affection on HER side would have given, for self-interest alone could induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so thoroughly aware that he was weary.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, God bless you, Daisy, and good night!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
