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INFLEXIBLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Resistant to being bent
Example:
an inflexible knife blade
Classified under:
Similar:
muscle-bound (having stiff muscles as the result of excessive exercise)
rigid; stiff (incapable of or resistant to bending)
semirigid (not fully rigid)
Also:
inelastic (not elastic)
Antonym:
flexible (able to flex; able to bend easily)
Derivation:
inflexibility; inflexibleness (a lack of physical flexibility)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Incapable of change
Example:
a man of inflexible purpose
Classified under:
Similar:
adamant; adamantine; inexorable; intransigent (impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason)
die-hard; rock-ribbed (tradition-bound and obstinately opinionated)
fossilised; fossilized; ossified (set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs)
hard-core (stubbornly resistant to change or improvement)
brassbound; ironclad (inflexibly entrenched and unchangeable)
Antonym:
flexible (capable of being changed)
Derivation:
inflexibility (the quality of being rigid and rigorously severe)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Not making concessions
Example:
uncompromising honesty
Synonyms:
inflexible; sturdy; uncompromising
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
hard-line; hardline (firm and uncompromising)
Derivation:
inflexibility (the quality of being rigid and rigorously severe)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Incapable of adapting or changing to meet circumstances
Example:
an unbending will to dominate
Synonyms:
inflexible; rigid; unbending
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unadaptable (not adaptable)
Derivation:
inflexibility (the quality of being rigid and rigorously severe)
Context examples:
Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of brass.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Abbot Berghersh was a good man, but how was he better than this kindly knight, who lived as simple a life, held as lofty and inflexible an ideal of duty, and did with all his fearless heart whatever came to his hand to do?
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible state of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the subject of her sitting on a box.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
