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 […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC:

     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

   • 1898, George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra:

     RUFIO (truculently). Are your men Romans? If not, it matters not how many there are, provided you are no stronger than 500 to ten.

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:

     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.)

5. (Of speech or writing) Violent; rude; scathing; savage; harsh.
   • 1872, John Morley, Voltaire:

     Voltaire is never either gross or ((((truculent))).

6. (obsolete) (rare) (Of a disease) Destructive; deadly.
   • 1665, Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague … with several waies for purifying the air in houses, streets:

     More or less (((truculent))) Plagues.

• 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.

Borrowed from French truculent, from Latin truculentus.

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

1. truculent