Reluctant means unwilling, and showing it. The child dragged to the dentist, the friend who helps you move house and sighs on every flight of stairs, the hand that goes up very slowly at the back of the room.
It nearly always takes TO plus a verb: reluctant to answer, reluctant to admit he was wrong. Never reluctant of. The adverb is reluctantly and the noun is reluctance — with great reluctance, after some reluctance. A reluctant hero is someone who never wanted the part and does it anyway, which is the point of the word: a reluctant person goes ahead. Refusing is something else entirely. If you say no, you were not reluctant, you declined.
The Latin parts are back and to struggle. Reluctant is struggling backward against the very thing you are about to do.
hooks ontostruggle
Reluctant is Latin reluctāns, from reluctor, to struggle back against something. Inside it sits luctor, to wrestle — the word for a wrestling match. A reluctant person has not stopped fighting the idea; they are simply losing, and doing what was asked anyway.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewg-
Latin
reluctāns
English, today
reluctant
Built from
Latin reluctāns (whence -ant), present participle of reluctor (“to struggle against, oppose, resist”), from re- (“back”) + luctor (“to struggle”) (whence re-.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA