recusant
/ˈɹɛkjʊzənt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.70 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Someone refusing to attend Church of England services, between the 16th and early 19th centuries, whether a Protestant dissident or a Roman Catholic.
noun
Anyone refusing to submit to authority or regulation.
adj
Pertaining to a recusant or to recusancy.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: (all sometimes synonymous) Dissenter, Nonconformist, free churchman; autem cackler (archaic cant)"
- "Near-synonyms: refuser, defier, dissenter, objector, protester, iconoclast, maverick, nonconformist, rebel, refusenik, renegade"
- "[…] to set forth the commission to avenge his father’s death laid upon him by Apollo, together with the warning of the god that if he prove recusant to his duty of vengeance, the Furies of his father will blast his mind and waste his body."
- "Still, to disobey a direct order in the field is no small matter in any circumstances, and especially in Sparta. The recusant captains must have known how dangerous their defiance was to them, yet they risked it."
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: recūsans