contumacious
/kontyoomaysh ss/ • adjective archaic or Law stubbornly or wilfully disobedient to authority. — DERIVATIVES contumaciously adverb contumacy noun. — ORIGIN from Latin contumax, perhaps from tumere ‘to swell’.
Perform another search of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
About this dictionary
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English contains 145,000 words, phrases, and definitions.
Find out more about Oxford's range of English dictionaries
Sign up for the AskOxford Word of the Day
Search the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Search the Concise Dictionary of First Names
| 
