obstreperous
adjective
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Imagine walking a dog down a sidewalk in a neighborhood full of delicious smells and other temptations—it’s easy to picture your pooch barking and straining at the leash to chase a squirrel, or dragging you toward something enticingly (to them) stinky, right? But can you imagine saying to your doggo in response, “Quit being so obstreperous!” Probably not. Obstreperous has a much more formal flair than words, such as stubborn or unruly, used to describe similar behavior. As such it’s unlikely to be used in casual speech or contexts like the one above. The word comes from a combination of the handy Latin prefix ob- (meaning “against”) and strepere, a verb meaning “to make a noise”; someone who is obstreperous can be thought of as literally making noise to rebel against something, much like a protesting crowd or an unruly child. Strepere has made little noise in the English lexicon, however; in addition to obstreperous it seems only to have contributed to the rarely encountered strepitous and its synonym strepitant, which mean “characterized or accompanied by much noise”—that is, “noisy.”
Synonyms
Examples of obstreperous in a Sentence
Chris Wiley, The New Yorker, 10 Jan. 2024
Rachelle and Matthew had told me that Zac had become obstreperous and even menacing toward them, but Howells mentioned several incidents of physical aggression.
—Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2024
The patience that administrators initially displayed toward their most obstreperous students ran out when the antisocial campus bacchanalia, and their tolerance thereof, did reputational damage to their host institutions.
—Noah Rothman, National Review, 2 Jan. 2024
The Sun has become increasingly obstreperous lately, and the results here on Earth have been nothing short of dazzling – but also disruptive.
—Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2023
The Boston Tea Party also symbolizes something obstreperous in the American character.
—The Editors, National Review, 16 Dec. 2023
Those old enough to have encountered the waxy brown goop may have even undertaken the ritual of removing the obstreperous material from cars made from the 1970s through 1990s.
—Robert Ross, Robb Report, 6 Nov. 2023
And anyway, subverting an election is hardly the act of an obstreperous child.
—Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 8 Aug. 2023
That’s bad news for the country’s democratic future, but NATO allies can hope Mr. Erdoğan will be less obstreperous now that he’s held onto power.
—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 29 May 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'obstreperous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near obstreperous
Cite this Entry
“Obstreperous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obstreperous. Accessed 1 Jun. 2024.
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obstreperous
adjective
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