Crossword Dictionary
TENACIOUS
dogged, dour, persistent, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding - a
stubbornly unyielding; "dogged persistence"; "dour determination"; "the most vocal and pertinacious of all the critics"; "a mind not gifted to discover truth but tenacious to hold it"- T.S.Eliot; "men tenacious of opinion"
Synonyms
dogged, insistent, patient, persevering, persistent, pertinacious
Examples
Cynthia Byrne never opened her eyes and clung to Dean's right arm with such a tenacious grip he thought he'd be permanently scarred.
For building purposes stones were got out, dressed, carved and sculptured with stone hammers and chisels made of hard and tenacious rock.
Sometimes the stuff is disintegrated with water in a " puddling machine," which was used, especially in Australia, when the earthy matters are tenacious and water scarce.
Etymology
c. 1600, from Latin stem of tenacity + -ous. Related: Tenaciously; tenaciousness.
tenacity (n.)
early 15c., tenacite, "quality of holding firmly," from Old French ténacité (14c.) and directly from Latin tenacitas "an act of holding fast," from tenax (genitive tenacis) "holding fast, gripping, clingy; firm, steadfast," from tenere "to hold" (from PIE root *ten- "to stretch"). The PIE root produced two Latin verbs, tenere "to hold, grasp," and tendere "to stretch" (as in tend (v.1)), which perhaps is from an inflected form in the PIE verb. Both Latin verbs have past participle tentus.
-ous
word-forming element making adjectives from nouns, meaning "having, full of, having to do with, doing, inclined to," from Old French -ous, -eux, from Latin -osus (compare -ose (1)). In chemistry, "having a lower valence than forms expressed in -ic."