Balkiness

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state or quality of being balky or uncooperative. uncountable

    "[…] he was mildly annoyed to find that the chair shifted itself—remote control over objects was a labor-saver and probably a money-saver […] and obviously to be preferred to the blind balkiness of mechanical gadgets. Nevertheless Jubal was not used to telecontrol done without wires or waves […]"

  2. 2
    likely to stop abruptly and unexpectedly wordnet

Example

More examples

"[…] he was mildly annoyed to find that the chair shifted itself—remote control over objects was a labor-saver and probably a money-saver […] and obviously to be preferred to the blind balkiness of mechanical gadgets. Nevertheless Jubal was not used to telecontrol done without wires or waves […]"

Etymology

From balky + -ness.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.