will·ful

also wil·ful (wĭl′fəl)

adj.

1. Said or done on purpose; deliberate: willful disregard of the rules. See Synonyms at voluntary.

2. Obstinately bent on having one's own way: exasperated by his willful child.

will′ful·ly adv.

will′ful·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

willfulness - the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline

fractiousness, unruliness, wilfulness

intractability, intractableness - the trait of being hard to influence or control

contrariness, perverseness, perversity - deliberate and stubborn unruliness and resistance to guidance or discipline

wildness - an unruly disposition to do as one pleases; "Liza had always had a tendency to wildness"; "the element of wildness in his behavior was a protest against repressive convention"

willfulness

also wilfulness
noun

The quality or state of being stubbornly unyielding:

bullheadedness, doggedness, hardheadedness, mulishness, obstinacy, obstinateness, pertinaciousness, pertinacity, perverseness, perversity, pigheadedness, tenaciousness, tenacity.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Her will was sometimes willfulness, and the ease with which she did most things led her to be impatient of hard tasks or long ones.

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The inveterate willfulness and caprice of his proceedings in these particulars defied every effort to reduce them to a system, and baffled all attempts at calculating on them beforehand.

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Philander, that I was quite right, as usual; and but for your stubborn willfulness we should have escaped a series of most humiliating, not to say dangerous accidents.

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Oh, my friend, that I should have brought you to all this by my willfulness and vanity; and now when I might save you my wits leave me and I forget the way."

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The court said willfulness is a state of mind, done intentionally and voluntarily to violate a law.

Pampanga trader wins tax evasion charges

The appellate court also vacated the jury's damages award and the district court's award of enhanced damages, remanding the case to the district court for a new trial on damages and reconsideration of willfulness. The appellate court affirmed the district court rulings in all other respects.

Briggs & Stratton reports Exmark awarded $28.8M in damages by court

Ultimately, to prove willfulness, prosecutors must establish that 1) the law imposed a duty on a defendant; 2) the defendant knew of the duty; and 3) the defendant voluntarily and intentionally violated that duty.

The resurrection of Al Capone? Tax charges make an effective weapon in combating

That willfulness is never to be confused with fascism.

Rightwards

There are multiple means by which the Commonwealth may prove willful failure to appear, and not all of those means rely on an inference of willfulness derived from proof of timely notice.

CAV: Counsel's appearance suggests client knew trial date

The original verdict was for $636,807 in lost profits but that's nothing compared to what's still under consideration additional damages of $1.2 million due to the continuing sales, attorneys' fees of more than $1 million, and treble damages for willfulness. The defendant, JF Microtechology, has appealed to the D.C.

Minnesota patent holder wins at trial