Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use reluctance in a sentence

27 example sentences · noun

Reluctance means unwillingness to do something. Example: “Our new dog shows reluctance to go on walks, preferring to be indoors.”

Examples of reluctance by meaning

nounUnwillingness to do something.

  • Our new dog shows reluctance to go on walks, preferring to be indoors.

nounThat property of a magnetic circuit analogous to resistance in an electric circuit.

  • That is to say, the total number of ampere-hours, including the drop of gilbertage, due to magnetic flux traversing the reluctance of the circuit, must be equal to zero.1903, The Electrical World and Engineer, volume 42, page 369

More sentences with reluctance

  • With great reluctance, he was introduced to pomegranates, whenceforth he refused any other fruit.From the entry whenceforth
  • In the early part of the Cancon era, CKLW demonstrated considerable reluctance in programming legitimately locally-made singles.1973 May 19, Ritchie York, “Artist Claims CKLW’s Keen Interest Affects U.S. Hits”, in Billboard, volume 85, number 21, Los Angeles…. From the entry CanCon
  • Some of the exchangees showed a rigidity and reluctance to adapt.1968, American County Government, volume 33, page 19. From the entry model
  • What is the real reason of this professional reluctance on your part?1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries. From the entry turn
  • The innate reluctance of the Englishman to make himself conspicuous has stood him here in good stead.1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic. From the entry mufti
  • My dad’s reluctance to seek medical care isn’t unique.2024 October 18, Andre Frois, “Why Elderly Parents ‘Die Die’ Won’t See the Doctor”, in ricemedia.co, archived from the original on 18 Dec…. From the entry die-die
  • The level of cognitive complexity necessary to make commitments helps to explain the reluctance to commit that some students exhibit.2009, Nancy J. Evans, Deanna S. Forney, Florence M. Guido, Student Development in College: Theory, Research, and Practice, →ISBN. From the entry multiplistic
  • 'I keep telling you to call me Xavier,' he interjected silkily, aware that her reluctance to do so intrigued him.2007, Sharon Kendrick, The Sheikh's English Bride, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 60. From the entry Xavier
  • According to anthropology professor Peter Rigby, the Maasai's resistance to Westernization and their reluctance to enter the market system is ethnosuicide.2005, Randall Elam Mayes, The Cybernetics of Kenyan Running: Hurry, Hurry Has No Blessing, page 92. From the entry westernization
  • Until recently, there has been a great reluctance to alter the clock network and attempt a nonzero-skew solution.2004, Sachin Sapatnekar, “Clocking and Clock Skew Optimization”, in Timing, New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers…. From the entry skew
  • While they are voracious feeders, they have an unsharklike reluctance to take the baited hook of the angler.1975, John Clark, Shark Frenzy, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 45. From the entry unsharklike
  • She'd been poised to deliver another side-handed slice to Mouse's head, and only with reluctance did she lower her arm and move back.2014, Barbara Delinsky, Secret Promises, →ISBN, page 489. From the entry side-handed
  • Lovecraft must cat-and-mouse with us as well, interminably exploiting the hesitations and reluctances of his narrator to tell us what the basic horror is.2004, Fritz Leiber, Ben J. S. Szumskyj, S. T. Joshi, Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark, page 301. From the entry cat-and-mouse
  • On the other hand, the constancy of others around her could indicate a reluctance on their part to allow her the full matrescent role.1975, Dana Raphael, Being Female: Reproduction, Power, and Change, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 68. From the entry matrescent
  • While it’s impossible to group people into perfect categories, Rai explains that Kaminski claims the main thing that sets otroverts apart is their “reluctance to conform to group norms.”2026 June 4, Cecily Knobler, “There’s a new personality type called the ‘otrovert’ and one major trait sets it apart”, in Upworthy…. From the entry otrovert
  • Telemetry would be sent to Kinzei, who had agreed with great reluctance to ensure an unjammable signal got broadcast to seventy percent of the Northern Hemisphere.2020, Andrew Vaillencourt, Sullivan's Gift. From the entry unjammable
  • Despite the pragmatic reluctance of government ministers, in Greece the cause of Enosis quickly took fire in street demonstrations and in the columns of the press.2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Country, Penguin, published 2020, page 312. From the entry enosis
  • On the other hand, if tyrannophobia hampers useful grants of power to the executive, it creates social costs, namely and entrenched reluctance to transfer necessary powers to the executive.2011, Eric A. Posner, Adrian Vermeule, The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic, →ISBN, page 203. From the entry tyrannophobia
  • The most talked-about new book here, “China is Unhappy,” combines hypernationalism with biting criticism of Western mismanagement and of China’s reluctance to grasp its place in history.2009 April 2, Michael Wines, “An Unsure China Steps Onto the Global Stage”, in New York Times. From the entry hypernationalism
  • All the papers came as usual, in their long, arhythmical collapse onto the doormat, where they lay like a menace and were approached at last with long-armed reluctance.2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 17, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN. From the entry arhythmical
  • Perhaps once more the somewhat prescriptivistic nature of most grammars of the time accounts for the reluctance to regulate language choice suggested by Heath and Mandabach.1983, “Language Planning: The State of the Art / Juan Cobarrubias”, in Juan Cobarrubias, Joshua A. Fishman, editors, Progress in Language…. From the entry prescriptivistic
  • Every bit of straw-clutching, every bit of hope that Hugh might be alive was followed instantly by a reaction of dismay, of reluctance to pursue it.1962, Lionel Davidson, The Rose of Tibet, page 65. From the entry straw-clutching
  • It has not yet been connected with Hanoi by rail, as intended, on account of the reluctance of the Chinese to give the French a foothold in KWANGSI.1907, The Chinese Empire, London: Morgan & Scott, →OCLC, →OL, page 278. From the entry Lungchow
  • But even though the Pleven Plan was the brainchild of a French prime minister, public debate had revealed the extent of French reluctance to countenance German rearmament under any conditions.2005, Tony Judt, “The Politics of Stability”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN. From the entry countenance
  • In an interview with Flying magazine, Heberding commented that her pet annoyance was "the reluctance of people generally to accept a woman whether as a pilot or a preflight inspector."1991, Deborah G. Douglas, United States Women in Aviation, 1940-1985, page 9. From the entry pet

Meaning of reluctance

  1. noun Unwillingness to do something.
  2. noun Hesitancy in taking some action.
  3. noun Defiance, disobedience.

Full definition of reluctance

Questions about reluctance in a sentence

How do you use reluctance in a sentence?
Reluctance is used as a noun. For example: “Our new dog shows reluctance to go on walks, preferring to be indoors.”
What is a short sentence with reluctance?
“My dad’s reluctance to seek medical care isn’t unique.”
What does reluctance mean?
Reluctance means unwillingness to do something.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reluctance (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use reluctance in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/reluctance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.