You searched for: “contumacy
contumacy (s) (noun), contumacies (pl)
1. Obstinate disobedience, stubborn and unreasonable resistance or rebelliousness; insolence: The decision of the company to cut down on the number of working hours, and so of pay, resulted in a contumacy of the employees of the company who refused to accept the pay cuts.
2. The stubborn resistance and refusal to obey a legitimate authority of any kind: Jerome’s contumacy to appear in court, even when he had received a judicial order requiring his presence to provide evidence regarding a robbery that he witnessed, was not understood by his family who had encouraged him to do so.
3. Etymology: from Latin contumacia, "insolent"; from con-, "intensive" +tumere, "to swell" + -acy, "quality, condition".

This contumacy term should not be confused with "contumely" even though both words are nouns which are derived from the Latin verb tumere, "to swell".

This entry is located in the following unit: tum-, tume-, -tumescence (page 1)