standfastadj.n.

1683 E. Ravenscroft Prol. Dame Dobson Epil. 2 And if you Criticks here are troublesome I'l Diametrically upon you come. And maul you with my Charm, Firm, Close, Standfast Thumb!

1716 M. Davies Athenæ Britannicæ II. 369 Witness our own W. W. who sometimes seems very positive, and a standfast stickler for his Arianism even to Martyrdom.

1889 H. B. Stowe Uncle Lot in L. C. Holloway Woman's Story 1 The inhabitants were all of that respectable old standfast family who make it a point to be born, bred, married, die, and be buried all in the self same spot.

1962 Slavic Rev. 21 562 The strength of ideological ties is evidenced by the standfast attitude of many Communist labor union leaders after 1950 when greater flexibility might have forestalled their expulsion.

2005 D. M. Gabbay & J. Woods Pract. Logic Cognitive Syst. II. v. 151 There are ranges of cases for which just such a standfast assumption about conditionalization is justified.

1824 St. Louis (Missouri) Enquirer 13 Jan. Piles of drift, lodged in the bends and generally kept from moving off by standfasts or planters.

1846 N. Hawthorne Mosses from Old Manse II. ix. 162 It seems as if the whole world, both morally and physically, were detached from its old standfasts, and set in rapid motion.

1903 Engin. News (N.Y.) 3 Dec. 499/1 Standfasts were bolted to groundways, and wrapped with ¾-in. chain to get a rigid connection.

1990 R. E. Shalhope Roots of Democracy (2004) Pref. p. xii Individuals and groups find themselves separated from the fixed cultural standfasts of an earlier time.

2012 Independent 20 July 42/2 Try to cut or pull the seaweed above its anchorage (known as a standfast) so it can grow again.