Dictionary

resistless en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ɹɪˈzɪstləs/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ɹəˈzɪstləs/ (General-American)

Etymology

Etymology tree English resist Proto-Indo-European *lewh₁- Proto-Indo-European *lewHs-der. Proto-Germanic *leusaną Proto-Germanic *lausaz Proto-Germanic *-lausaz Proto-West Germanic *-laus Old English -lēas Middle English -les English -less English resistless From resist + -less.

Meanings

1. That cannot be resisted; irresistible.
   • His name was Talus, made of yron mould, / Immoveable, resistlesse, without end […] 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
   • Maſters commands come with a power reſiſtleſs / To ſuch as owe them abſolute ſubjection; / And for a life who will not change his purpoſe? / (So mutable are all the ways of men) / Yet this be ſure, in nothing to comply / Scandalous or forbidden in our Law. 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 83, lines 415–420:
   • Delving earth in his resistless way, / Howling, the Child with fierce flames / Issu'd from Enitharmon. 1794, William Blake, The Book of Urizen, 365-7:
   • My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter IV, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:
   • I seize the descending man .... I raise him with resistless will. / O despairer, here is my neck, / By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me. 1855, Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, in Leaves of Grass, page 45:
   • Is all our Life, then, but a dream / Seen faintly in the golden gleam / Athwart Time's dark resistless stream? 1889, Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “[Untitled poem]”, in Sylvie and Bruno, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC:
2. Putting up no resistance; unresisting.
   • All this time they were doing something—I could not see what—to the corpse; sometimes they were too busy rifling the dead body, I believe, to talk; again they let it fall with a heavy, resistless thud, and took to quarrelling. 1861, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Grey Woman:

Forms

Deriveds

resistlessly · resistlessness