Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Troublesomely urgent or persistent in requesting; pressingly entreating.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Troublesomely solicitous or pressing; vexatiously persistent; pertinacious.
- Troublesome; vexatious.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Troublesomely urgent; unreasonably solicitous; overpressing in request or demand; urgent; teasing.
- adjective rare Hard to be borne; unendurable.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of a demand:
persistent orpressing , often annoyingly so. - adjective Of a person: given to importunate
demands ,selfishly orthoughtlessly demanding. - verb rare To
importune , or to obtain byimportunity .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective expressing earnest entreaty
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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But I explained, in my purest Tuscan, that I was not of the ordinary kind of importunate tourist.
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But I explained, in my purest Tuscan, that I was not of the ordinary kind of importunate tourist.
The Ink-Stain (Tache d'encre) — Complete Ren�� Bazin 1892
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The word "importunate" has the signification of a wearisome repetition of a request, a constant asking, impossible to satisfy.
Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn Lafcadio Hearn 1877
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'importunate' in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful.
Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes Vol. II Edward FitzGerald 1846
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So much of success is pure dumb luck and/or being super-hot and/or having an importunate sister, as you have so eloquently described here.
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These dreary folk, echoes of the dead past and importunate and self-elected pall-bearers for the present and future, proxy-livers of life and vicarious sensualists that they are in a eunuch sort of way, insist, since their own selves, environments, and narrow agitations of the quick are mediocre and commonplace, that no man or woman can rise above the mediocre and commonplace.
THE KANAKA SURF 2010
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Initially, Wordsworth was supposed to be transferring his importunate family to England, but instead he dodged all responsibility and transferred his idealized love to his sister, Dorothy, who alone of all his family still seemed to admire and adore him.
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This time, however, it's Americans who're the importunate immigrants.
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Consistent doses of hip-hop have been replaced by methodical dances and importunate hooks that stay in your head long after you've turned the radio off.
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I love this poor, sad country dearly but, as some importunate fellows might be eager to point out, our cuisine is not exactly one of our strong points.
"Thick as mince and a clatty bastit" Peter Rozovsky 2010
dhuber commented on the word importunate
"expressing earnest entreaty"
-an alliterative definition
November 15, 2007
yarb commented on the word importunate
...how she now dreaded
each night the importunate mauve-capped swollen member.
- Peter Reading, Carte Postale, from Diplopic, 1983
June 30, 2008