From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwilfulwil‧ful British English, willful American English /ˈwɪlfəl/ adjective 1 STUBBORNcontinuing to do what you want, even after you have been told to stop – used to show disapproval a wilful child2 → wilful damage/disobedience/exaggeration etc —wilfully adverb —wilfulness noun [uncountable]
Examples from the Corpus
wilful• Indeed, her doubt could be described as wilful blindness.• She claimed to be doing it only for Jeeta, but there was real, wilful contrariness in it, I suspected.• And just as her peculiar, rebellious, wilful escapade had gone wrong ... so had theirs.• Sometimes kids who are described as difficult or wilful just need a little extra love and attention.• He lived a very wilful life, and the fear of chaos had always haunted him from childhood.• Billy is a very wilful little boy who's constantly being punished for not doing as he's told.• Actually the quarrel was largely due to Apollinaire's careless use of terms and to a rather wilful misunderstanding on the part of Boccioni.• The coroner brought in a verdict of wilful murder.• Partly, no doubt, the figures include at least some wilful or at least entirely feckless credit misusers.• For doubt, full grown, is not a lapse of memory but a wilful refusal to remember. 