Word.ws English Dictionary

contumatious

contumatious is the obsolete form of contumacious.

Meaning of contumacious

Adjective

contumacious (comparative more contumacious, superlative most contumacious)

  1. Contemptuous of authority; willfully disobedient; rebellious.
    • […] and, on his conſtancie, ſounds an accuſation to Herod of a contumacious affront, on ſuch a day, before many peers; præpares the king to ſome paſſion, and at laſt, by her daughter’s dancing, effects it.1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes”, in Henry John Todd, editor, The Poetical Works of John Milton, volume 4, published 1801, page 505
  2. Willfully disobedient to the summons or orders of a court.

Forms of contumatious

comparativemore contumatious
superlativemost contumatious

Questions about contumatious

What is contumatious the obsolete form of?
Contumatious is the obsolete form of contumacious.

Words near contumatious in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contumatious (page history and authors); contumacious (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.

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