truculent

adj

1. Cruel or savage.

   “The truculent soldiers gave us a steely-eyed stare.”

   “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.”

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

2. Defiant or uncompromising.

   “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.”

   “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.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “These bitches is getting truculent.”

4. Violent; rude; scathing; savage; harsh.

   “Voltaire is never either gross or truculent.”

   “[…] 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.”

   “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)Destructive; deadly.

   “More or less truculent Plagues.”