What does bullheadedness mean?
Bullheadedness is the quality of being stubborn to the point of unreasonableness — pressing ahead with one's own view or course of action while ignoring advice, evidence, or the objections of others. The word derives from the adjective 'bullheaded,' which likens a person to a bull: powerful, head-down, and impossible to turn aside once moving. Unlike mere determination, which carries a positive charge, bullheadedness is almost always critical, suggesting that someone's refusal to yield is a fault rather than a virtue. It appears commonly in descriptions of leaders who ignore warnings, negotiators who refuse compromise, and friends who won't admit error — though it can be admiring when sheer persistence achieves what tact could not. Related terms include stubbornness, obstinacy, pigheadedness, and intransigence, each with slightly different shades of forcefulness.
nounBullheadedness is the quality of being stubbornly determined and unwilling to change one's mind or course of action, often despite reasonable argument or evidence to the contrary.
- The trait or state of being obstinately unyielding or unwilling to reconsider one's position.
"His bullheadedness kept the project alive when everyone else had given up, even though it also cost him two allies."
"Her bullheadedness in negotiations earned grudging respect from her opponents."
"What the plan lacked in elegance it made up for through sheer bullheadedness."
As an abstract mass noun, bullheadedness is normally uncountable; a plural form exists grammatically but is rare and used only when referring to distinct instances or types of the quality.
"The biographer catalogued the dictator's various bullheadednesses across decades of rule."
English has a whole stable of stubborn-animal words — mulish, pigheaded, dogged — and bullheadedness may be the most combative of them all: it pictures a bull lowering its head and refusing to budge.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of bullheadedness
Bullheadedness is formed from 'bull-headed,' an English compound combining 'bull' (from Old English 'bulla') with 'head' (Old English 'hēafod'), meaning stupidly or obstinately headstrong. The compound adjective arose in English by the seventeenth century, and the abstract noun 'bullheadedness' followed as a regular derivation with the suffix '-ness.' It belongs to a family of English idioms that use animals to characterize stubborn temperaments, alongside mulish, pigheaded, and dogged.
Related word forms
How bullheadedness is actually used
Bullheadedness is almost always used with a negative or disapproving connotation, implying not just firmness but an unreasonable refusal to listen. It is informal-to-neutral in register and common in everyday speech and journalism rather than formal academic writing. The adjective form 'bullheaded' is more frequent than the noun.
Easily confused with bullheadedness
Mulishness refers to stubbornness by comparison with a mule, while bullheadedness invokes the charging, head-down persistence of a bull; both mean stubbornness but draw on different animal imagery.