staunch
/stɔn(t)ʃ/ adjective C2- Not permitting water or some other liquid to escape or penetrate; watertight.
- Impermeable to air or other gases; airtight.
- Strongly built; also, in good or strong condition.
- Staying true to one's aims or principles; firm, resolute, unswerving. · Without our staunch front line the enemy would have split the regiment.
- Dependable, loyal, reliable, trustworthy. · He’s been a staunch supporter of mine through every election.
- Of a hunting dog: that can be depended on to pick up the scent of, or to mark, game.
- Stubborn, intransigent.
Comparative stauncher · Superlative staunchest
From the library
“True,” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at the tragic remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you please, that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which I may remark, that while my family remained among the staunchest adherents of the exiled princes, your father lost no time in joining the new government; and that while the Citizen Noirtier was a Girondin, the Count Noirtier became a senator.”
He was—nay, probably may still be—a Bonapartist, and is called Noirtier; I, on the contrary, am a staunch royalist, and style myself de Villefort.
But Godfrey is a fine lad—a staunch lad.
“Pompey is the pride of the local draghounds—no very great flier, as his build will show, but a staunch hound on a scent.
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