a. Having a stout heart; courageous, undaunted; † stubborn, intractable.
1552. Huloet, Stowe harted or stomaked, grauicors.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 334. When the king and his Lords sawe the demeanour of the people, the stowtest hearted of them that were with the king were afrayed.
1611. Bible, Isa. xlvi. 12. Hearken vnto me, ye stout hearted, that are farre from righteousnesse.
1613. Hieron, Minor Saints, Wks. 1614, I. 31. Wee are generally stout-hearted, and will not yeelde to the terrour of the Lord.
1788. Wesley, Jrnl., 29 March. It was given me to speak strong words, such as made the stout-hearted tremble.
1841. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, lxi. A few of the stoutest-hearted were armed and gathered in a body on the green.
1847. Helps, Friends in C., I. i. 18. I think, however, that the view is a stouthearted one.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xiii. III. 273. There were indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South; but scarcely any who in obstinacy … could bear a comparison with the men of the school of Cameron.
1905. Lyall, Life Marq. Dufferin, I. i. 12. His descendants were stout-hearted country gentlemen after his kind.
1906. W. A. Craigie, Relig. Anc. Scand., ii. 30. Snorri describes him [Ty] as ‘the bravest and stoutest-hearted of the gods.’
Hence Stoutheartedly adv.; Stoutheartedness.
a. 1683. Owen, Holy Spirit (1693), 39. The Reliefs which … carnal Security and Stoutheartedness in Adversity do offer.
1826. E. Irving, Babylon, I. Introd. 17. Leaving them long to welter in the wo from which their stout-heartedness would not be warned.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, vii. 212. For his cardinal virtue Euripides chose what the Greeks called εὐψυχία, stout-heartedness.
1884. Brit. Q. Rev., April, 418. Mr. Mackintosh proceeds stout-heartedly in his great work.
