Comparing words for resistance

Question

The English word "resistance" is obviously etymologically related to resistentia, and I would like to understand how good of a translation resistentia. To be clear, I mean resistance in the sense of a rebellious movement, strong opposition to present rule, or something similar. There are several words in L&S which translate to "resistance" or "opposition":

• oppugnantia
• refragatio
• refragium
• repugnantia
• repugnatio
• resistentia

Based on the dictionary entries, I don't see much of a difference between these. Are there differences, or are they pretty much interchangeable? Does the extant text corpus suggest notable differences in tone or style?

Judging by intuition — which is known to have failed miserably — I see a distinction into three categories: The ones coming from pugna refer to armed resistance. The ones coming from refragari I don't understand; I don't see where they come from so that I could see what kind of a nuance they might have. Finally resistentia sounds like standing against something, suggesting a different tone from the more militant words. I have no proof to substantiate my guesswork, and I might be reading too much into things. However, I do think that the pugna-words mean essentially the same thing, and so do the refragari-words; the question is then whether these three classes differ from each other.

L&S mentions that resistentia is a late Latin word for repugnantia, so those seem to be synonyms. Otherwise I find the entries hard to compare.

Answer 1

The verb refragor has the meaning of resisting, opposing or gainsaying; refragator is an opponent; refragatio is resistance or opposition. Another likely verb is renitor, to struggle against, or resist (there is a derived noun renisus, which is post-classical).

I believe that verbs that are compounds of sto — resto, resisto, obsto, obsisto — and their derived nouns contain the idea of 'standing one's ground': as it seems to me, they do not quite have the sense of active resistance as conducted by the French maquis in WW2, for example.

Answer 2

"Repugnantia" etc. is more like fighting back, actively opposing something, or rejecting it; whereas "resistentia" is endurance, not yielding to a pressure. Oppugnantia is like rising against, or standing in the way of, something. "Repugnantia" also means intrinsic contradiction or incoherence. "Repugnatio" is rather rare and I have never seen it to mean "contradiction". The -io verbal nouns tend to have more concrete and verbal meaning, whereas the "-ntia" nouns are often more abstract and de-verbalized: cf. e.g. "provisio" vs. "providentia". So I thing "repugnatio" would tend to be used to refer to the actual occurrent acts of resistance, whereas "repugnantia" would describe the general attitude or programme as a whole.