truculence
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From French truculence, from Latin truculentia.
Noun edit
truculence (usually uncountable, plural truculences)
- The state of being truculent; eagerness to fight; ferocity.
- 1904 January 29 – October 7, Joseph Conrad, chapter 7, in Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, London, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], published 1904, →OCLC:
- To these provincial autocrats, before whom the peaceable population of all classes had been accustomed to tremble, the reserve of that English-looking engineer caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro between cringing and truculence.
- 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine[1]:
- He was huge in all that he did, and his benevolence was even more overpowering than his truculence.
- 1930, Dashiell Hammet, chapter 8, in The Maltese Falcon, New York, N.Y., London: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC, page 97:
- Dundy’s fists were clenched in front of his body and his feet were planted firm and a little apart on the floor, but the truculence in his face was modified by thin rims of white showing between green irises and upper eyelids.
- 2020, Bret Stephens, “Meet a Secret Trump Voter”, in New York Times[2]:
- Trump’s truculence on the world stage: “Everyone kowtows to Iran because they’re crazy. Now we have our own bit of crazy.”
Synonyms edit
French edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Latin truculentia.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
truculence f (plural truculences)
- truculence (eagerness to fight)
Related terms edit
Further reading edit
- “truculence”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.