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insistent
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show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • FIERS. [... in an insistent tone] You've put on the wrong trousers again. What am I to do with you?   (source)
    insistent = firm (demanding)
  • The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.†   (source)
  • He held the capsule out to me, insistent.†   (source)
  • The whine returned, more insistently this time.†   (source)
  • The silver-haired man beckoned insistently.†   (source)
  • To his credit, he then repeated the exercise, calling, "Again, upside down," but because of their insistence on a gravity that didn't exist, the boys became awkward when the maneuver was under, as if vertigo seized them.†   (source)
  • He needed only a drop but half a cc got into the barrel before he could put his thumb above the plunger and even then its insistent, upward force felt to him like some feral thing lunging from its cage.†   (source)
  • There, tucked in the seam, was the photograph that had been taken in 1912 at the Count's insistence, and much to Mishka's chagrin.†   (source)
  • The biggest obstacle in our relationship remained her insistence that, in using her letters against her (as she put it), we had trampled on her rights.†   (source)
  • Paralleling my mom's insistence that I attend Riverdale because John F. Kennedy had once gone to school there, she was won over to Valley Forge when she heard that General Norman Schwarzkopf was a graduate.†   (source)
  • And there your insistence upon dishonesty ruled out Candor.†   (source)
  • "Is someone there?" came the voice again, insistent.†   (source)
  • The memorable thing about him was how insistent he was that he'd been wrongly convicted.†   (source)
  • Mickey was bobbing in the insistent roll of seawater, half unconscious, a foamy yellow fluid coming from his mouth.†   (source)
  • I heard the laughter, felt a hand in my hair, another mouth on mine, insistent, invasive, and then— "Will ..."†   (source)
  • He owned a cinema, which Mariam had never seen, but at her insistence Jalil had described it to her, and so she knew that the fa9ade was made of blue-and-tan terra-cotta tiles, that it had private balcony seats and a trellised ceiling.†   (source)
  • Rush's insistence on perilous remedies for yellow fever patients was a rare misstep for the energetic doctor.†   (source)
  • Despite Teabing's insistence that their investigation should be conducted meticulously, Sophie felt eager and pushed ahead of them, making a cursory walk-through of the five knights on the left.†   (source)
  • She sighed and said, "Robert, I don't exactly know why, but she was insistent.†   (source)
  • She felt the pendant swinging from her neck, a tiny but insistent pull.†   (source)
  • Harry thought briefly of Dumbledore's insistence that nobody under seventeen should submit their name, but then the wonderful picture of himself winning the Triwizard Tournament filled his mind again...He wondered how angry Dumbledore would be if someone younger than seventeen did find a way to get over the Age Line.†   (source)
  • Her voice got more insistent.†   (source)
  • One building in particular appears smoothed and worn by the insistence of fingers: the building he's in.†   (source)
  • She reached down to remove her shoes, but before she could do it, he was pressing against her, probing with his fingers, gently and insistently.†   (source)
  • 28 When Kabuo had finished telling his story on the witness stand, Alvin Hooks rose and stood before him insistently working on a hangnail.†   (source)
  • Dell Duke was insistent: "You have to go.†   (source)
  • The number words pounded insistently against Meg's brain.†   (source)
  • After dinner, her parents wanted to watch a movie, and they did so, Basic Instinct, at her father's insistence.†   (source)
  • I should show Stargirl and the world that I wasn't like the rest of them, that I appreciated her, that I celebrated her and her insistence on being herself.†   (source)
  • Normally I hated waking in the night with him so close to me, but my earlier fantasies must have primed me, because the very sense of it there, a combination of feeling its insistent pressure and imagining its smooth heavy shape, doused me like a hot wave, and instantly I was breathless.†   (source)
  • He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother.†   (source)
  • Was her insistence that "WICKED is good" finally a thing of the past?†   (source)
  • I GET OFF THE PHONE, stunned by the news of the deadline and Missus Stein's insistence to get Constantine in the book.†   (source)
  • The knock came again, more insistent this time.†   (source)
  • It was bitingly cold up here, and the wind pulled at his clothes like an insistent lover.†   (source)
  • He's whispering, but his voice is harsh with insistence.†   (source)
  • That explained blitzball, that explained the nightly meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence that I share all his diversions.†   (source)
  • The horn still sounded from across the water, insistently repeating its urgent message.†   (source)
  • The hiss was loud and insistent, and I was amazed I had not heard it sooner, in spite of the wind's wailing.†   (source)
  • And just when I think he's lost the strength to respond, his voice comes out sounding even more insistent.†   (source)
  • Piper's own voice sounded strange in her ears—more insistent, richer in tone.†   (source)
  • At his insistence she was removing her clothes, and at such speed.†   (source)
  • "Dear Flora," said Flora's mother again in a louder, more insistent voice.†   (source)
  • Not after Crake's precautions, his insistence on keeping these people pure, free of all contamination of that kind.†   (source)
  • Rosaura's shrieking was added to by Esperanza's insistent wailing.†   (source)
  • Its voice was thin, needle-sharp and insistent; The three boys rushed forward and Jack drew his knife again with a flourish.†   (source)
  • Ammu, surprised at the unusually shrill insistence from her usually quiet son, apologized to the Orangedrink Lemondrink Uncle.†   (source)
  • I'm defensive; he's insistent.†   (source)
  • Their early attempts at composition had been part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that kept them going was sheer bloody-mindedness.†   (source)
  • He crouched and then he sat and the voice of the front door spoke again, more insistently.†   (source)
  • Though my maids were insistent that I stay, I left, taking the long way, down a back stairwell on the other end of the hall.†   (source)
  • Before she could answer, the dog scratched insistently at the door, and Savannah got up to open it.†   (source)
  • This violin had a piercing, insistent sweetness of tone, almost like a baby crying.†   (source)
  • Calls were forwarded from the insistently ringing telephone directly to her cell phone.†   (source)
  • And in that moment it's like I can hear the low growl of the ocean, can hear its distant, insistent murmur, can imagine its weight closing around my mother, water as heavy as stone.†   (source)
  • The particular morning I'm talking about, it was really foggy, and I knew the field would be soaking, but Tommy had been insistent we go there for a walk.†   (source)
  • Maybe that's why I was so insistent on buying it after being stripped of my livelihood.†   (source)
  • At Roran's insistence, Eragon left his food to show him the stone.†   (source)
  • Louder now, more insistent.†   (source)
  • Anyway, there was a police officer on duty at the entrance of the building, assigned by the police chief at the insistence of Roscoe Campbell.†   (source)
  • Even at night, when there should have been a restful intermission, there was none because the voices of a dying landscape were insistent and loud.†   (source)
  • Mother was particularly insistent on our eating together: this was her domain, and in her own way she was trying to give us something to cling to.†   (source)
  • I tried to convince him what I wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it — especially since nothing had actually happened to me — but he remained insistent.†   (source)
  • At his insistence, she concedes and makes him an American dinner once a week as a treat, Shake 'n Bake chicken or Hamburger Helper prepared with ground lamb.†   (source)
  • She had an absolute distrust of authority and an insistence on complete privacy which seemed to make her, and my family, even odder.†   (source)
  • They said I was too focused on poring over data, too insistent on approaching things scientifically rather than emotionally.†   (source)
  • Dickens caricatures this Malthusianthinking in Scrooge's insistence that he wants nothing to do with the destitute and that if they would rather starve than live in the poorhouse or in debtors' prison, then, by golly, "they had best hurry up and do it and decrease the excess population."†   (source)
  • But even on the details I didn't understand at first, like the "markers," Colton was insistent.†   (source)
  • It was past time for you to leave, and you would have a year ago, if not for the Divine of Ikkt's insistence that Lieutenant Awn stay, and my own opposition.†   (source)
  • Their insistence prompted Burnham to telegraph Olmsted immediately and urge him once again to come.†   (source)
  • How grateful I was now for Father's insistence that his children speak German and English almost as soon as Dutch.†   (source)
  • Shining the flashlight ahead of him, he stepped past the elevator shaft (at Wendy's insistence they hadn't used the elevator since they moved in) and through the small stone arch.†   (source)
  • But his father always kept a mustache, at his mother's insistence.†   (source)
  • I couldn't imagine why she was so insistent that I hurry home.†   (source)
  • 'You've nothing more to tell me, and your insistence on recklessness has endangered us both.†   (source)
  • He stared at her, and seemed about to say something when her cell phone, buried in her messenger bag, began an insistent blaring.†   (source)
  • At Leigh Anne's insistence, they pulled over.†   (source)
  • There they found him, at Clara's insistence, looking every bit like a dejected sheep, exactly as she had described him on her slate.†   (source)
  • Taciturn and withdrawn boys who hadn't so much as grunted for the first two-thirds of practice now shouted insistently for the ball.†   (source)
  • This was done at the insistence of many child psychologists, who felt that to mix fantasy and reality would be misleading to children.†   (source)
  • Later she reproached him for his fruitless insistence on not permitting himself to grow old in a natural way.†   (source)
  • All day the insistent dripping of I'm no good.†   (source)
  • She met Cilla in her late teens when, at Palmgren's insistence, she was trying to get the school certificate she had failed to complete at Komvux.†   (source)
  • She knocks again more insistently, and my resentment rises.†   (source)
  • Dale was insistent.†   (source)
  • On the fourth insistence, we finally sat.†   (source)
  • So when Molly left the building that day through what she hadn't even realized was a theft-detection gate, a loud, insistent beeping brought the head librarian, Susan LeBlanc, swooping over like a homing pigeon.†   (source)
  • When the Captain retired, my father, at the Captain's insistence, took over his position of mine superintendent.†   (source)
  • Let me take your picture, David had called, insistent, and she'd turned to find him, kneeling, focusing, intent on preserving a moment that never really existed.†   (source)
  • A cluster of birds flew up from the nearby trees, hitting the sky at the same moment I began beating out a faster, more insistent rhythm.†   (source)
  • Liz had scheduled a bunch of gigs for us around Thanksgiving—and we had some serious practicing to do before then, given that I hadn't picked up a guitar in months—but, at Mike's insistence, we were seeing to business first.†   (source)
  • Insistent pressuring voices.†   (source)
  • But it was too desperate, too insistent, a kind of sustained, tortured shrieking and Wayne realized it was the horse dying in the closed jackknife and he'd clamped his hands to his ears and run away into the field.†   (source)
  • Woke to Pounding on the door, insistent vibration, building noise.†   (source)
  • It was strangely and insistently double-edged, it was like making love in the midst of mirrors, or it was like death by drowning.†   (source)
  • The branches of the tree are as elastic as whips in the gusts—slap clatter clatter, insistent as a drummer.†   (source)
  • Mukhtar's public comments—including her insistence that rape of poor women was a systemic problem—embarrassed him.†   (source)
  • An insistent male voice intruded on my dream.†   (source)
  • Despite oral sulfatriad tablets and, later, at Ghosh's insistence, injection of precious penicillin into his buttocks, scarlet streaks (which were the hallmark of streptococcal infection) showed at his wrist, and the epitrochlear lymph node behind the elbow became as big as a golf ball.†   (source)
  • But at her son's gentle insistence, Ozhii Nelii gathered enough courage to take the long walk to her mother's camp with her son at her side.†   (source)
  • The next day Otto was returning to Germany, and Perry and Dick were driving back to Mexico City-at Dick's insistence.†   (source)
  • She was so insistent, this new Lissa.†   (source)
  • For five minutes the world was blotted out in rain, with these two watching its gray swirls and listening to its insistent drumming, safe and dry in their cave.†   (source)
  • There's yelping outside, insistent and distressed.†   (source)
  • At a court-martial called at his own insistence, he was found guilty only of disobedience.†   (source)
  • said Franz, and he saw himself attending a recent gallery preview at his wife's side, and at her insistence.†   (source)
  • Sunlight was itself still young, and the day had none of the insistence maturity would bring it in a few hours.†   (source)
  • Fear must have made her as implacable as her husband, because at some point that night, at her insistence, he tied a rope to the generator and threw it overboard as a second anchor.†   (source)
  • I tried not to worry about Frieda's insistence on my going away to school.†   (source)
  • Yossarian began slapping at him insistently and signaled wildly toward the entrance of the crawlway.†   (source)
  • But you were absolutely insistent about who could and couldn't be a member of the club.†   (source)
  • It was difficult for me to comprehend this insistence upon propriety.†   (source)
  • "Baby, food," she said insistently.†   (source)
  • Our lord is most insistent about contracts, and I should take it as a personal favor if you would ...humor me.†   (source)
  • Thanks to Dave Powers's insistence on making the most of PT-109, John F. Kennedy is elected to Congress.†   (source)
  • We wrestled in the darkness for a while before I felt his hand insistently lifting the hem of my T-shirt.†   (source)
  • She reaches up to put her arms around him, all tawny, smooth skin, those gray eyes with thick lashes, silent and insistent.†   (source)
  • I still question why Gallagher was so insistent that I workshop "Conviction" and that each and every student—this was not standard—respond to it afterward.†   (source)
  • My hand reached in the darkness and closed around Tom's tiny, budlike fist, and I realized that though I loved the touch of my children's little hands, there was another kind of touch—hard and insistent—for which my body hungered.†   (source)
  • They all waited, staring at him as though insistent on his tasting thefruit.†   (source)
  • At Belle's insistence the other Block children continued at the Adventist school.†   (source)
  • Otis's tone remained insistent, but gently so.†   (source)
  • He bounced his hand insistently.†   (source)
  • And, at the board's insistence, after a decade of living paycheck to paycheck, Mortenson accepted a long-overdue raise that nearly doubled his salary.†   (source)
  • And another voice, more insistent, more powerful.†   (source)
  • This trend toward informality has yielded less insistence on rigid codes of conduct during recent decades and a disregard for whatever authorities promulgate them.†   (source)
  • Attolia offered to convey the queen of Eddis to the capital by boat, but Eddis, on the insistence of her minister of war, declined.†   (source)
  • But I felt they were greatly relieved by my insistence.†   (source)
  • I think the basic fault that underlies the problem of stuckness is traditional rationality's insistence upon "objectivity," a doctrine that there is a divided reality of subject and object.†   (source)
  • I could hear the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin.†   (source)
  • She became relentless in her probing, as insistent as Geoffrey Washburn had been on the Ile de Port Noir, but without the doctor's patience.†   (source)
  • "Dance with me, Gemma," Simon says again, more loudly and insistently.†   (source)
  • In 1957, spurred by the efforts of the ANC Women's League, women all across the country, in rural areas and in cities, reacted with fury to the state's insistence that they carry passes.†   (source)
  • He was calm, but insistent.†   (source)
  • ~~~SECTION BREAK~~~ House Arrest Frankie Stevens had flown into Louisville at the insistence and expense of her editor-in-chief.†   (source)
  • Smith saw the bucked knees, the insistent pressure of ribs under skin, the weariness of the body.†   (source)
  • At Brigadier Judge Brody's insistence we hurriedly rigged a helper antenna at catapult head so that his drillmen could watch video in ready rooms, else we might not have had a gunner on duty.†   (source)
  • Celia wrote her first letter to Gustavo Sierra de Armas upon the insistence of Jorge del Pino, who came courting during her housebound exile.†   (source)
  • Alessandro had begun to dream, but was pulled from his reverie by the insistent and conscientious action of the corner of his eye.†   (source)
  • Someone began to pound insistently against the door frame, and my name was shouted in a plaintive and alarming way.†   (source)
  • Early the next morning, I strapped my oversized green sleeping bag, my military backpack, and, upon Grandmother's unwavering insistence, a coffee can containing her homemade snickerdoodle cookies onto my motorcycle.†   (source)
  • " 'You don't have to worry, Hank," said Larkin, with that incomprehensible, insistent note of pleading in his voice.†   (source)
  • And he'd always been pretty obsessed with keeping up appearances; without his stubborn insistence on their old routines, on keeping things "normal," she just got lost.†   (source)
  • But now, out of Uncle Axel's anxious insistence on my promise, the feeling of a threat was strengthened.†   (source)
  • But my feet were listening to that other voice, that faint but insistent madman in my brain.†   (source)
  • "Why was Kessell so insistent on an immediate surrender?" the spokesman reasoned.†   (source)
  • With a half hour to spare before Connor—at his insistence picked her up, she practiced her craft.†   (source)
  • The silence made Joe more nervous than the insistent trilling tone had done.†   (source)
  • Now I think my parents realize that they've parented themselves into a corner with their insistence that Asher and I make our own choices growing up and that we stand behind them and live with the consequences.†   (source)
  • I discovered that my father's method of teaching me Talmud and his patient insistence that I learn Talmudic grammar—I had .†   (source)
  • If you pushed us on it, if you were insistent, if you caught us alone in an elevator or on the back of an airplane or in a motel-bar lounge, we were consultants of ambient lighting to military installations.†   (source)
  • While we used to love rushing around the house and estate at Lalla's insistence to catch the dog Chindit, who had run off with her false breast, my father would retire to a book or his office acutely embarrassed.†   (source)
  • At his insistence, she would wake him every day at daybreak, almost weeping out of pity for his weak, exhausted body.†   (source)
  • But at Oz's insistence Eugene had agreed to let him help scrape down the hog and get off the ribs, middle meat, bacon, and chitlins.†   (source)
  • So insistent, that after a while Helen found herself going out to have a good look herself.†   (source)
  • He was giddy and insistent.†   (source)
  • At her insistence, each child was supposed to present a project which in some way or another reflected respect and honor of the Confederacy.†   (source)
  • But that's exactly what brought on this letter—much more than Bessie's insistence that I write to you about Ph.†   (source)
  • A preacher from the Seminary began a low, insistent, theological argument with a young lieutenant, back and forth, back and forth, the staff listening with admiration at the lovely words.†   (source)
  • All along she had thought of it, but now she grew more insistent.†   (source)
  • When they had gone-a triumphant Selvam in the van-and the place was quiet, I did indeed hear the drums, muffled and distant, insistently calling.†   (source)
  • It is one of those cities where childhood is a pleasure and memory a flow of honey; one of those cities that never lets go, that insinuates its precedence by the insistent delicacy of its beauty.†   (source)
  • One thing puzzled him: Peters' insistence that Karl Riemeck must have had help—must have had a highlevel collaborator.†   (source)
  • The old man came to him in his dreams, with his derby hat and his well-oiled braids and his squeaky shoes and his insistent talk.†   (source)
  • " Lee went on insistently, "My father told me about my mother when I was very little, and he didn't spare me.†   (source)
  • From "Dream Variation" Langston Hughes October 28, 1959 For years the idea had haunted me, and that night it returned more insistently than ever.†   (source)
  • A sharp, insistent drumming awakened me.†   (source)
  • It was not a rough or painful grasp, but he bore down strongly nonetheless, and insistently, and his grip held me fast in the chair.†   (source)
  • The third child is HELEN, six and a half years old, quite unkempt, in body a vivacious little person with a fine head, attractive, but noticeably blind, one eye larger and protruding; her gestures are abrupt, insistent, lacking in human restraint, and her face never smiles.†   (source)
  • But still she was moving her lips as she walked through the center of town, past the stores, the movie theaters, the solemn stone and granite banks where her footsteps came back to her more sharply than elsewhere, and the noise of passing cars took on a harsher, more insistent growl.†   (source)
  • I had, at Indar's insistence, even danced with Yvette and felt her skin below the silk of her blouse; and when I saw Raymond my thoughts—leaping at this stage of the evening from possibility to possibility—were at first only about the difference in their ages.†   (source)
  • Downstairs Graf began to bark, an insistent, belligerent alarm announcing a strange car in the driveway.†   (source)
  • In the deserted street it was still dark and the drip-drip of the water from the trees alternated with the insistent chirruping of drenched sparrows.†   (source)
  • Her long fingers, warped and knotted by rheumatism, drum on the arms of the chair, driven by an insistent life of their own, without her consent.†   (source)
  • Mr. Head's grip was tightening insistently on Nelson's arm.†   (source)
  • BERENGER: But I would like to say how sorry I am for being so insistent ...and so obstinate ...and getting so angry ...in fact ...I acted stupidly.†   (source)
  • This hope insistently divided his life into only two parts, journey and rest.†   (source)
  • Angry at his insistence that its legal authority had ended, the Convention by a thumping vote of 109 to 2 declared Texas to be a part of the Southern Confederacy, and decreed that all state officers must take the new oath of allegiance on the fourteenth of March.†   (source)
  • Max inquired the price, and the shoemaker cleared his throat and asked the boy, above Sobel's insistent hammering, would he please step through the side door there into the hall.†   (source)
  • It was a steady, insistent screaming from every bush and tree.†   (source)
  • My hunger was insistent.
  • They were shocked motionless; the knock was repeated insistently, and in the sudden realization that the door was not locked Rosemary...   (source)
    insistently = in a persistent or firm manner (demanding to be answered)
  • She was just calling in her insistent way.†   (source)
    insistent = persistent or continuing or firm
  • The bleating of the goat became louder, more insistent.†   (source)
  • Grant heard an insistent chirping, and the big head swung down.†   (source)
  • At Mr. Hubbard's insistence, Calvin had one installed in his truck.†   (source)
    insistence = demand or persist
  • They walked for a few hours, Harry, at Hermione's insistence, hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak.†   (source)
  • I'd been braced for anything—for a scent as impossibly insistent as the human smell in the woods.†   (source)
  • I wanted to get you more time, but Father is quite insistent.†   (source)
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