resilience

Everyday

1. The ability to recover and keep going after something hard, sad or frightening; bouncing back. tree →
2. The ability of a material to spring back into shape after being bent, squashed or stretched. tree →
3. The ability of a place, system or community to cope with problems like floods or power cuts. tree →

In the lessons

In school wellbeing lessons, resilience means not giving up when things go wrong — learning from mistakes and asking for help. In science, rubber has resilience. In geography and the news, towns build resilience against floods. In stories, a resilient hero gets knocked down and gets up again. Phrases: build resilience, show resilience, emotional resilience.

Examples

• Learning to ride a bike takes resilience — you fall, then try again. tree →
• The team showed real resilience after losing the first match. tree →
• Our class talked about how to build resilience. tree →
• Rubber has great resilience; it springs back into shape. tree →
• The village's resilience after the flood amazed everyone. tree →
• Resilience doesn't mean never feeling sad; it means you keep going. tree →

Note

Uncountable. Adjective: resilient. Spelling: resilience (ends -ience, not -iance). A myth is that resilient people never feel upset — they do, but they recover.