Word.ws English Dictionary

contumacity

contumacity is the alternative form of contumacy.

Meaning of contumacy

Noun

contumacy (countable and uncountable, plural contumacies)

  1. Disobedience, resistance to authority.
    • [T]heſe Muſhrome Lords (Spirituall onely in Title, but wholly Temporall in reality), firſt ſprouted up by inſenſible degrees in the Church of Christ; ſo it is moſt infallibly convinced of notorious falſehood, by the multitude of thoſe moſt execrable Treaſons, Treacheries, Conſpiracies, Rebellions...1641, William Prynne, “The Prologve”, in The Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacie, both to Regall Monarchy, and Civil Unity: or, An Historicall Collection of the Severall Execrable Treasons...

Forms of contumacity

pluralcontumacities

Origin of contumacity

From Middle English contumacite, from Old French contumacité, from Latin contumācia (“stubbornness, insolence, firmness”), from Latin contumāx (“stubborn, obstinate”). By surface analysis, contum(ax) + -acity.

Questions about contumacity

What is contumacity the alternative form of?
Contumacity is the alternative form of contumacy.

Words near contumacity in the dictionary

  1. contumacies
  2. contumacious
  3. contumaciously
  4. contumaciousness
  5. contumacities
  6. contumacity
  7. contumacy
  8. contumatious
  9. contumatiously
  10. contumelies
  11. contumelious

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contumacity (page history and authors); contumacy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “contumacity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contumacity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.