recusant

See also: récusant

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin recūsans, recūsāntis, from recūsō (“to refuse, decline; to object to; to protest”). See recuse.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɛkjʊzənt/

Noun

recusant (plural recusants)

1. (historical) Someone refusing to attend Church of England services, between the 16th and early 19th centuries, whether a Protestant dissident or a Roman Catholic.

   Hypernyms: dissenter, dissident; nonconformist; Reformer, reformer

   Near-synonyms: (all sometimes synonymous) Dissenter, Nonconformist, free churchman; autem cackler (archaic cant)

2. Anyone refusing to submit to authority or regulation.

   Near-synonyms: refuser, defier, dissenter, objector, protester, iconoclast, maverick, nonconformist, rebel, refusenik, renegade

Related terms

• recusal
• recusancy
• recuse

Translations

historical: one refusing to attend Church of England's services

one refusing to submit to authority

• Finnish: niskoittelija (fi)

Adjective

recusant

1. Pertaining to a recusant or to recusancy.
   • 1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VII. Orestea. II: The Libation-Bearers”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, pages 185-186:

     […] to set forth the commission to avenge his father’s death laid upon him by Apollo, together with the warning of the god that if he prove recusant to his duty of vengeance, the Furies of his father will blast his mind and waste his body.

   • 1981, Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition:

     Still, to disobey a direct order in the field is no small matter in any circumstances, and especially in Sparta. The recusant captains must have known how dangerous their defiance was to them, yet they risked it.

Anagrams

• Centaurs, Etruscan, arsecunt, centaurs, near cuts, rescuant, traunces, uncrates, untraces

Latin

Verb

recūsant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of recūsō

Anagrams

• Carnutes