English edit

Etymology edit

un- +‎ persuadable.

Adjective edit

unpersuadable (comparative more unpersuadable, superlative most unpersuadable)

  1. Not persuadable; who cannot be persuaded or convinced.
    • 1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XX”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: [], volume I, London: [] S[amuel] Richardson;  [], →OCLC:
      I wish, for both our sakes, my dear unpersuadable girl, that the decision of this point lay with me. But why, when you know it does not, why should you thus perplex and urge me?
    • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 43, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, [], published 1853, →OCLC:
      He was unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language.
    • 1922, Geoffrey Montagu Cookson, transl., Four Plays of Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, page 171:
      For not by prayer to Zeus is access won;
      An unpersuadable heart hath Cronos' son.
  2. Of which one cannot be persuaded.
    • 1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter 8, in Emma: [], volume II, London: [] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC:
      He did not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could with time persuade her to any thing. [] The unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed to be good behaviour to his father.
    • 1994, Barry Werth, “Chapter 6”, in The Billion-Dollar Molecule[1], New York: Simon & Schuster, page 95:
      Compared with the researchers’ own anxious exertions and the towering unknowns that swirled before them, Boger’s calm and assiduous attention to his slides seemed to many of them—dangerously, a few argued—aloof. ¶ Boger thought to convince them otherwise was “an unpersuadable issue,” and so he didn’t try.

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