How to Use recalcitrant in a Sentence

recalcitrant

adjective
  • The same would be true in the rare cases when the wife is recalcitrant.
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, Sun Sentinel, 6 Sep. 2022
  • Scrapes sides and bottom again and mix in any recalcitrant streaks.
    — Leah Eskin, chicagotribune.com, 12 Dec. 2017
  • Bored teenagers who were nonetheless still less recalcitrant than some of the adults in the room.
    — Roxanne Roberts, Washington Post, 4 Jan. 2023
  • Khamenei’s stance is at once recalcitrant and cautious to the point of cowardice.
    — Arash Azizi, The Atlantic, 22 June 2025
  • Many tycoons could count on ministers to put in a word with a recalcitrant banker.
    — The Economist, 19 Apr. 2018
  • Over the course of that trip, he’d been transformed from a recalcitrant Arab to an ebullient one.
    — John Ganz, Harper's Magazine, 22 May 2024
  • When the big side-by-side got within a hundred yards, the recalcitrant beast bucked a couple of times and charged.
    — Steve Meyer, Anchorage Daily News, 12 Dec. 2021
  • The touch switches for the heater and the air conditioner can be recalcitrant as well.
    — Rich Ceppos, Car and Driver, 12 Apr. 2023
  • Exxon is not the only recalcitrant company to be dragged along in said manner.
    — Ariel Cohen, Forbes, 14 June 2021
  • Trump did far more than just facilitate a pact with a recalcitrant country.
    — Fred Barnes, Washington Examiner, 25 Feb. 2021
  • But Texas is recalcitrant and change is hard to achieve, Jack said Wednesday.
    — Dallas News, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Consciousness may be the most recalcitrant concept of all.
    — Dan Turello, New Yorker, 10 Jan. 2026
  • The hope is to scare recalcitrant voters into casting a ballot.
    — Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 14 Aug. 2024
  • The drug is designed for recalcitrant gout patients, who often have large lumps on their fingers, feet, and kidneys.
    — Arthur Allen, Fortune, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Maybe a better way to deal with these recalcitrant issues is to combine them so that there is a framework for compromise.
    — Letter Writers, Twin Cities, 25 Aug. 2019
  • New young friends were happy to de-bollix our recalcitrant computer.
    — Murr Brewster, Christian Science Monitor, 16 Apr. 2025
  • Even some of the recalcitrant recruits were relieved to be finally under way.
    — David Grann, The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2023
  • The bill did nothing to draw recalcitrant Southern Democrats back into the fold.
    — Jeff Shesol, The New Republic, 14 Oct. 2020
  • What recalcitrant Jew, with his finger on the pages of the cursèd Talmud, could attain it, could live it?
    — Cynthia Ozick, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Apr. 2023
  • For some this means baking pumpkin pie; others like to leaf-peep or force their recalcitrant partners to go apple-picking.
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 10 Oct. 2019
  • Regan is an 18-year-old distance runner who hasn’t been able to run for three months thanks to a recalcitrant stress fracture.
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 2 July 2022
  • And if a recalcitrant rancho libertarian like him can reform in the worst of times, so can others.
    — Los Angeles Times, 31 Dec. 2021
  • If recalcitrant journalists or their sources don’t bow to legal threats, the aggrieved can go on the offensive—in other words, get down and dirty.
    — Ben Widdicombe, Town & Country, 18 Jan. 2019
  • An eyebrow-raising speech on the Senate floor by a recalcitrant Democrat.
    — Alan Fram, ajc, 14 Jan. 2022
  • The mediator wields the threat of publicly blaming the recalcitrant party or parties for the failure of talks.
    — Andrew P. Miller, Foreign Affairs, 29 Sep. 2024
  • And so what began as a way of protecting viral genomes would have become the way life stores all its genes—except for those of some recalcitrant, contrary viruses.
    — The Economist, 20 Aug. 2020
  • In addition, this time the Met’s design staff has triumphed over the Breuer’s recalcitrant galleries.
    — Roberta Smith, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2018
  • Yet even a recalcitrant Pretoria is mulling changes to telecom laws that could eventually clear a path for the company.
    — Yinka Adegoke, semafor.com, 22 May 2026
  • For the most recalcitrant, this involves multiple home visits in full PPE.
    — The Economist, 15 Aug. 2020
  • One of the people jailed in July was a recalcitrant taxpayer with shares in a company that mines gold and silver, according to the tax office.
    — Karlis Salna, Bloomberg.com, 2 Nov. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'recalcitrant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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