Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not tractable; intractable.
  • There was room among these hitherto untractable irregularities for the additional results of the theory. Difficult; rough.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Intractable.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He again abandoned the reins of his war horse, and wrung bitterly the hands, which his mail gloves rendered untractable.

    Quentin Durward 2008

  • He begins to be timid, suspicious, and untractable, and I fear Jenny will soon bend her brows on him in vain.

    Redgauntlet 2008

  • “To which of those happy propositions is your Duke so much wedded that contradiction will make him unreasonable and untractable?”

    Quentin Durward 2008

  • The Captain began to find he had a very untractable pupil to manage, when, while they were arguing together,

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • It was the proudest and most untractable of the Jacobins who acclaimed ‎ Bonaparte with greatest energy when he suppressed all liberty and made his hand of iron ‎ severely felt.

    Democracy R.I.P 2007

  • How come else the untractable zealots in different and opposite parties?

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

  • Moreover, the problem of building satisfactory relativistic generalizations of these models has encountered serious mathematical difficulties due to the appearance of untractable divergences.

    Collapse Theories Ghirardi, Giancarlo 2007

  • Besides, with all his respectful assiduities, it was easy to observe, (if it had not been his general character) that his temper is naturally haughty and violent; and I had seen too much of that untractable spirit in my brother to like it in one who hoped to be still more nearly related to me.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • Sometimes, I've been able to appeal to untractable students in my paper comments by asking them to engage the rhetorical and analytical tools of their other courses or chosen discipline.

    Ferule & Fescue Flavia 2006

  • How come else the untractable zealots in different and opposite parties?

    God, Aids & Circumcision Hill, George 2005

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