It's the word of the day for October 21st.
Today's word is intransigent, spelled I-N-T-R-A-N-S-I-G-E-N-T.
Intransigent is an adjective.
It's a formal word that describes a person who refuses to compromise or abandon an often extreme position or attitude.
It can also describe a thing such as a system or point of view that shows the same kind of stubbornness.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Scientific American by Leo DeLuca.
Honey and vinegar, a traditional medicinal combination known as oxymel, dates to the ancient world.
Apothecaries in the Middle Ages sold it, Hippocrates prescribed it,
and the physician philosopher Ibn Sina extolled its virtues.
Today, such a mixture sounds likelier to dress a salad than a lesion,
but with antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the rise,
scientists are eagerly seeking new ways to fight intransigent infections.
Now, a study in microbiology suggests oxymel may indeed help.
Both intransigent and its younger sibling intransigence came to English from the Spanish adjective intransigente,
meaning uncompromising, and ultimately from the Latin verb transigere,
meaning to come to an agreement.
Knowing that many English words with the prefix in have prefix less antonyms,
one might guess that intransigent has its own place in our language.
While this word does pop up occasionally in print,
it is too uncommon at this point to qualify for entry in our dictionaries.