Wiktionary

ferocious

English edit

Etymology edit

Taken from Latin ferōx (“wild, bold, savage, fierce”) +‎ -ous.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /fəˈɹəʊʃəs/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -əʊʃəs

Adjective edit

ferocious (comparative more ferocious, superlative most ferocious)

  1. Marked by extreme and violent energy.
    • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 376:
      But it seemed to me that there were few faces like his, with the ferocious profile that brought to mind the Latin word rapax or one of Rouault's crazed death-dealing arbitrary kings.
    • 2011 October 1, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16-12 Scotland”, in BBC Sport‎[1]:
      Scotland needed a victory by eight points to have a realistic chance of progressing to the knock-out stages, and for long periods of a ferocious contest looked as if they might pull it off.
    • 2023 January 25, Howard Johnston, “Peter Kelly: August 2 1944-December 28 2022”, in RAIL, number 975, page 47:
      "My memory of him in the office at Peterborough was the ferocious nature of his typing, on a manual machine of course. This was long before the days of desktop publishing, and you could hear him down the corridor absolutely hammering the keyboard."
  2. Extreme or intense.

Synonyms edit

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Further reading edit

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