refractory
C2CEFR level
80/100Rarity: very rare
FormalRegister
General adjective
Stubborn or unmanageable; resistant to authority, control, or treatment.
The infection proved refractory to every antibiotic the doctors tried.
Medicine adjective
Describing a condition that fails to respond to standard treatment despite escalating therapy.
Her refractory hypoxaemia despite maximal ventilation prompted a referral for ECMO.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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