Reluctance

How to spell reluctance

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reluctance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reluctance mean?

1. nounAn unwillingness or hesitation to do something.

Reluctance in a sentence

• She signed the contract with obvious reluctance.

• His reluctance to discuss the budget worried the whole team.

Where does reluctance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Reluctance traces back to the Latin verb reluctari, which meant 'to struggle or wrestle against', formed from the prefix re- ('back' or 'against') and luctari ('to wrestle, to struggle'). The mental image is literally that of someone wrestling against a pull, a person digging in their heels rather than moving forward. English took the related adjective 'reluctant' first in the seventeenth century, and the noun reluctance followed soon after to name that inner state of unwillingness. The same luctari root gives us the rarer word 'ineluctable', meaning something that cannot be struggled out of, in other words unavoidable. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the silent-sounding 'ct' cluster and the final '-ance' (not '-ence'), since the schwa vowel before the ending gives no clue which letter to write.

How the word is built

• re- (back, against)
• luct (struggle, from Latin luctari 'to wrestle')
• -ance (noun-forming suffix)