RELUCTANCE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Reluctance

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/rɪlˈəktəns/ /rilˈəktəns/ Listen

noun

Reluctancy, Reluctance n.

The state or quality of being reluctant; repugnance; aversion of mind; unwillingness; often followed by an infinitive, or by to and a noun, formerly sometimes by against. "Tempering the severity of his looks with a reluctance to the action."

Synonyms: Syn. See Dislike. "He had some reluctance to obey the summons." "Bear witness, Heaven, with what reluctancy Her helpless innocence I doom to die."

(Elec.) Magnetic resistance, being equal to the ratio of magnetomotive force to magnetic flux.

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Etymology of 'Reluctance'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reluctance" Quotes from Famous Books

... long look at him, turned silently and walked slowly in the direction of the hill. He moved so deliberately and with such evident reluctance that Livingstone's blood boiled. ...

— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... reimbursed; while in coal mining, the cheapness of fuel, the large proportion which manual labor bore to the total cost of producing coal, and the necessity for producing large outputs with the simplest appliances, explained the reluctance with which high pressure steam compound engines, and other modes embracing the most modern and approved types of economizing power had been adopted. Metalliferous mining, with the exception of the working of iron ore, was not in a prosperous condition; but ...

— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... little restraint upon their communication with the world without. Although military sentinels were posted on the leads of the prison, such was the lawlessness prevailing, that Mr. Newman, the governor, entered this portion of it with reluctance." ...

— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... carping than it has in fact occasioned. And I am very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the reception of Mr. Wells's work. To me the welcome accorded to his best books has always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterized by a mean reluctance. And yet if there is a novelist writing to-day who by generosity has deserved generosity, that novelist is H.G. Wells. Astounding width of observation; a marvellously true perspective; an extraordinary grasp of the real significance of innumerable phenomena utterly ...

— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... to a distant part of the village, where he called on an acquaintance of neutral politics. And here becoming much engaged in conversation, and feigning to have forgotten the hour of the night, he was at last prevailed on to accept, as he did with great seeming reluctance, the invitation of his ...

— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

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