pertinacity

plural pertinacities

1. uncountableusuallyThe state or characteristic of being pertinacious.

   1846, Edgar Allen Poe, The Black Cat With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend.

   2 more examples

   Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity—or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius?

   1768, Mr. Yorick [pseudonym; Laurence Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, volume I, London: […] T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, […], →OCLC

   Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance.

   1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC

   Synonyms: pertinaciousness, resolve, stubbornness, tenacity