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Catch-22 vocabulary
268 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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importunate
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synonyms: recalcitrant, refractory, obstreperous, obdurate, adamantine, renitent ???
► definition
Definition:annoyingly persistent---1. Troublesomely urgent; unreasonably solicitous; overpressing in request or demand; urgent; teasing; as, an impotunate petitioner2. Hard to be borne; unendurable. [rare]Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
Euphues being thus tied to the stake by their importunate entreaty, began as follows.
John Lyly. The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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“Could I have a match?” I ask her. Surprising how much like a small, begging child she makes me feel, simply by her scowl, her stolidity; how importunate and whiny.
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Queen. I will not speak with her.
Gent. She is importunate, indeed distract.
Her mood will needs be pitied.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet.
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Blomkvist did not want to be importunate, so he waited a week before he went to her house.
Stieg Larsson. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Reg Keeland translation), p.321 (2009)
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there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1813)
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He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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This argues something, worthy of a fear
Of importune and carnal appetite.
Take heed you do not cause the blessing leave you,
With your ungovern'd haste.
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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About 1 in the afternoon I came aboard and found all my officers and men very importunate to go to that bay where the hogs were said to be. I was loth to yield to it, fearing they would deal too roughly with the natives. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon many black clouds gathered over the land, which I thought would deter them from their enterprise; but they solicited me the more to let them go.
William Dampier. A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699
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Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of their brutality.
Jack London. The Call of the Wild (1903)
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Billy did not want to see what happened next, and a clerk importuned him to come over and see some really hot stuff they kept under the counter for connoisseurs.
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five (1968)
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The deed being thus prepared, on the third or fourth day after the birth of the child, or as they call it, the “final importunity,” the friends gather together, and there is a feast held, where they are all very melancholy—as a general rule, I believe, quite truly so—and make presents to the father and mother of the child in order to console them for the injury which has just been done them by the unborn.
Samuel Butler. Erewhon
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