truculent

First attested circa 1540, from Middle French, from Latin truculentus (“fierce, savage”), from trux (“fierce, wild”).

• enPR: trŭkʹyə-lənt, IPA^(key): /ˈtɹʌkjʊlənt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

truculent (comparative more truculent, superlative most truculent)

1. Cruel or savage.

   Synonyms: barbarous, ferocious, fierce

   The truculent soldiers gave us a steely-eyed stare.

   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, OCLC 3359935:

     She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.

2. Deadly or destructive.
3. Defiant or uncompromising.

   Synonyms: inflexible, stubborn, unyielding

4. Eager or quick to argue, fight or start a conflict.

   Synonym: belligerent

   • 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 10, in The Beasts of Tarzan, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published March 1916, OCLC 32368983:

     If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while the former was eating.

   • 1992, Joel Feinberg, “The Social Importance of Moral Rights”, in Philosophical Perspectives‎, Ethics, page 195:

     It is an important source of the value of moral rights then that — speaking very generally — they dispose people with opposed interests to be reasonable rather than arrogant and truculent.

   • 2013 February 11, Phil Bronstein, quoting SEAL Team Six Member, “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed”, in Esquire Magazine‎:

     These bitches is getting truculent.

     (Referring to women in bin Laden’s compound.)

• truculence
• truculency
• truculently

• belligerent

• unclutter

Borrowed from Latin truculentus (“fierce, savage”), from trux (“fierce, wild”).

• IPA^(key): /tʁy.ky.lɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

truculent (feminine truculente, masculine plural truculents, feminine plural truculentes)

1. violent or belligerent in a colorful, over-the-top or memorable fashion
2. picturesque, colourful

• truculence (noun)

truculent

1. third-person plural present indicative/subjunctive of truculer

• “truculent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From French truculent, from Latin truculentus.

truculent m or n (feminine singular truculentă, masculine plural truculenți, feminine and neuter plural truculente)

1. truculent