Stubborn

How to spell stubborn

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stubborn

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stubborn mean?

1. adjectiveDetermined not to change one's mind or course of action, even when it would be sensible to do so.

Stubborn in a sentence

• My father was too stubborn to admit that he had taken the wrong motorway exit.

• The negotiations stalled because both sides remained stubborn about the price.

Where does stubborn come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Stubborn is one of those words whose origin is genuinely murky. It appears in Middle English as 'stiborn' or 'stuborne' from around the 1300s, meaning unyielding or hard to manage, but no clear parent word in Old English or French has ever been pinned down. The most popular suggestion links it to 'stub', the fixed and immovable stump of a tree or tooth, the idea being that a stubborn person stands as rooted and unbudging as an old stump; this is plausible but unproven. The doubled 'b' in the modern spelling settled in fairly late, mirroring the short vowel before it, which is why writers sometimes hesitate over how many letters belong in the middle. Because the trail goes cold so early, careful dictionaries simply mark the origin as unknown rather than invent a tidy story.

How the word is built

• stubb- (uncertain root, perhaps related to 'stub', a fixed and immovable stump)
• -orn (obscure ending; not a productive suffix)