• tenacious •
Printable Version Pronunciation: tê-nay-shês • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Strongly cohesive, holding together firmly, as tenacious clay. 2. Clinging tightly to something, as a tenacious vine. 3. Holding on tightly and persistently, not giving up or going away, as a tenacious memory.
Notes: The adverb for today's word is tenaciously and the noun, tenacity, as to continue one's faltering tennis career with tenacity.
In Play: Today's word is probably used more widely in its figurative than its literal senses, but we shouldn't forget how to use it literally: "The postman found it difficult to free his shredded pants leg from the tenacious mouth of the dog." Of course, most often we hear this word as a polite substitute for stubborn: "Fairleigh Luce was surprised at how tenaciously members of the Flat Earth Society clung to the notion that named their organization."
Word History: This Good Word comes to us from the Latin adjective tenax (tenac-s) "holding fast" from the verb tenere "to hold", a root that also appears in the recent Good Word, ostensible. That is the same root in tendril, which we borrowed from French. Latin's source for this word is the PIE root *ten- "to stretch", which also ended up as English thin. The Persian language added a suffix, -r, to this root, producing tar "string", which we find in sitar "three-string", the 3-stringed instrument which became prominent in Indian music.
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