# resistance

Pronunciation: say "ri-ZIS-tuhns" /ɹɪˈzɪstəns/

## Noun

1. The act of resisting something, or the ability to oppose or withstand it.
   - Simple: Acting against something, or the power to push back against it.
   - _The new policy faced fierce resistance from union members._
   - _Years of training gave the athletes remarkable resistance to fatigue._
2. An underground organization engaged in a struggle to free a country from forceful occupation.
   - Simple: A secret group that fights to free its country from an occupying force.
   - _The resistance blew up the rail line to slow the invading army._
   - _Members of the resistance printed secret newspapers throughout the occupation._
3. A force that tends to oppose the motion of an object.
   - Simple: A force that pushes against something moving and slows it down.
   - _A cyclist leaning forward reduces wind resistance at high speeds._
   - _The parachute creates enough resistance to slow the diver's descent._
4. The opposition that a conductor or circuit component offers to the flow of electric current through it, measured in ohms.
   - Simple: How strongly a wire or other part of a circuit slows down the flow of electricity through it.
   - _Engineers reduced the resistance in the cable to limit energy loss._
   - _The resistance of a copper wire goes up as the wire heats._

## Noun

5. A resistor; an earlier term for the electrical component that limits current in a circuit. *(dated)*
   - Simple: An older word for a resistor, a small part that limits the flow of electricity.

## Origin

This came through Middle English and Old French from Latin "resistentia." Morphologically it is "resist" plus the suffix "-ance."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/resistance (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).