Other forms: resistances
Resistance is pushing back against something that is trying to move you, change you, or pass through you. The neighbours' resistance to the new car park; a hinge that opens with a little resistance under your hand.
It nearly always takes TO: resistance to change, resistance to antibiotics, resistance to the plan. In wartime it becomes a name — the Resistance, the people who stayed behind and fought an occupying army from inside their own towns. Physics gives it a number, since electrical resistance, measured in ohms, is how hard a material makes it for current to get through, while air resistance is what a cyclist folds down to escape. Medicine uses it for the way a body, or a bacterium, holds out against something meant to kill it. In the gym, resistance training means working against a band or a weight. The path of least resistance is the lazy route, and nobody means it as praise.
1nounoppositionThe act of refusing to accept something and pushing back against it.~11%
“The proposal met fierce resistance from the staff.”
synonyms: opposition, pushback
2nounorganisedAn organised secret movement fighting an occupying power.~64%
“Her grandmother carried messages for the resistance.”
3nounresistanceHow strongly a material opposes an electric current, measured in ohms.~21%
“A thinner wire has a higher resistance and heats up fast.”
4nounforceA force that slows something moving, such as air pushing back against it.~2%
“Cyclists crouch low to cut down air resistance.”
5nounbodyThe power of a body or an organism to hold out against something harmful.~2%
“Overusing the drug builds resistance in the bacteria.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
resistance is an act of opposing.
Resistance came into English as resistence, through Old French from Latin resistentia. Pulled apart, it is the verb resist with the ending -ance, which turns an action into the thing itself: resisting becomes resistance, the way performing becomes performance.
Latin
resistentia
Old French
resistence
Middle English
resistence
English, today
resistance
From earlier resistence, from Middle English resistence, from Old French resistence, from Latin resistentia. Morphologically resist + -ance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA