TENACITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Tenacity

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/tənˈæsɪti/ Listen

noun

Tenacity n.

The quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or retentiveness, of memory; tenacity, or persistency, of purpose.

That quality of bodies which keeps them from parting without considerable force; cohesiveness; the effect of attraction; as distinguished from brittleness, fragility, mobility, etc.

That quality of bodies which makes them adhere to other bodies; adhesiveness; viscosity.

(Physics) The greatest longitudinal stress a substance can bear without tearing asunder, usually expressed with reference to a unit area of the cross section of the substance, as the number of pounds per square inch, or kilograms per square centimeter, necessary to produce rupture.

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Etymology of 'Tenacity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tenacity" Quotes from Famous Books

... become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,—a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders ...

— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... influences at work, and accepting these representative utterances, it may yet be asked by the incredulous—What of the inherent conservatism, the proverbial tenacity of India? Is there really any perceptible and significant change to record as the outcome of the influences of the nineteenth century? Well, the expression "Indian conservatism" is misleading. There is no Indian conservatism in the sense of a philosophy of politics, of ...

— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... thought of distance did not appall him. Four years at the top of the earth had accustomed him to the illimitable and had inured him to the lack of things. That winter Conniston had followed him with the tenacity of a ferret for a thousand miles along the rim of the Arctic, and it had been a miracle that he had not killed the Englishman. A score of times he might have ended the exciting chase without staining his own hands. His Eskimo friends ...

— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... boxed Michael Angelo's ears for giving him a saucy answer. We cannot fancy Mr. Darwin boxing any one's ears; indeed there can be no doubt he wore a very thick velvet glove, but the hand underneath it was none the less of iron. It was to his tenacity of purpose, doubtless, that his success was mainly due; but for this he must inevitably have fallen before the many inducements to desist from the pursuit of his main object, which beset him in the shape of ill health, advancing years, ample private means, large ...

— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... men. When he was successful—and he was generally successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both ...

— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

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