truculent

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

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

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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.

   • 1914 June, James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC:

     His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur.

2. Defiant or uncompromising.

   Synonyms: inflexible, stubborn, unyielding

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter VI, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 102:

     In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.

   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan‎, A. C. McClurg, →OCLC:

     Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan’s threats.

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

   Synonym: belligerent

   • 1877, David Magarshack, chapter 12, in Anna Karenina, part 6, translation of original by Leo Tolstoy:

     She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want any quarrel; she blamed him for wanting one, but she could not help assuming a truculent attitude.

   • 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.)

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

     Voltaire is never either gross or truculent.

   • 1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 10, in The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday Adventure, London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Co.; New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Co., →OCLC:

     […] or again, the first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog.

   • 1922, Rafael Sabatini, chapter XVI, in Captain Blood:

     Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent denunciation.

5. (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/

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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