REFRACTORY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Refractory

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/rəfrˈæktəri/ Listen $Listen 'refractory'$

adjective

Refractory adj.

Obstinate in disobedience; contumacious; stubborn; unmanageable; as, a refractory child; a refractory beast. "Raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory."

Resisting ordinary treatment; difficult of fusion, reduction, or the like; said especially of metals and the like, which do not readily yield to heat, or to the hammer; as, a refractory ore.

Synonyms: Perverse; contumacious; unruly; stubborn; obstinate; unyielding; ungovernable; unmanageable.

noun

Refractory n.

A refractory person.

Refractoriness. (Obs.)

OPottery) A piece of ware covered with a vaporable flux and placed in a kiln, to communicate a glaze to the other articles.

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$Etymology of 'Refractory'$ Etymology of 'Refractory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Refractory" Quotes from Famous Books

... government had been received; and declaring his fixed determination, in obedience to the high and irresistible duty consigned to him by the constitution, "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," to reduce the refractory to obedience. ...

— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... a Refractory Steed." Seymour's horse is infinitely more spirited and better drawn than Phiz's. Its struggling attitude is admirable. Seymour's landscape is touched more delicately; ...

— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... habits of industry or enterprise. The colored people in our slave States must, almost without exception, be destitute of information; and in choosing negroes to send away, the masters would be very apt to select the most helpless and the most refractory. Hence the superintendents of Liberia have made reiterated complaints of being flooded with shiploads of "vagrants." These causes are powerful drawbacks. But the negroes in Liberia have schools and churches, and they have freedom, which, wherever it exists, is always striving ...

— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... examination will be alike unbiassed by partiality and prejudice;-no refractory murmuring will follow your censure, no private interest will be gratified by ...

— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... expected to design a figure, the puzzle being to include all the marks given. One that I saw had four of the dots placed unusually close together, and the fifth in a distant corner: this latter, in the opinion of the lookers-on, would surely prove refractory. After some moments of consideration, with pencil suspended and eye attentive, the artist commenced drawing. In ten minutes the sketch was finished. It was an angel: her upturned head took in the highest of the group of dots; one hand hanging by her side the next; a knee the third; ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

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