truculent
adjective
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English speakers adopted truculent from Latin in the mid-16th century, trimming truculentus, a form of the Latin adjective trux, meaning “savage,” and keeping the word’s meaning. Apparently in need of a new way to describe what is cruel and fierce, they applied truculent both to brutal things (wars, for example) and people (such as tyrants). Eventually even a plague could be truculent. In current use, though, the word has lost much of its etymological fierceness. It now typically describes the sort of person who is easily annoyed and eager to argue, or language that is notably harsh.
Examples of truculent in a Sentence
Simon Schama, New York Review of Books, 28 Feb. 2002
Milton—in his prose an opinionated and truculent writer—remains a magnet for opinionated and truculent criticism.
—Helen Vendler, New Republic, 30 July 2001
Within a year of publishing The Female Eunuch, she had debated Norman Mailer in a truculent disputation at Town Hall in New York, turned up on the cover of Life magazine as the "saucy feminist that even men like," and inspired innumerable women to stop wearing underpants.
—Margaret Talbot, New Republic, 31 May 1999
… in the breast pocket of her police uniform she carried a small silver figurine of Durga, the Hindu goddess of shakti: power and strength. Defiant and truculent, she flashed a cheeky grin.
—Mary Anne Weaver, Atlantic, November 1996
Challenged to a fight by a truculent layabout on the playing fields of St. James's primary school one Saturday, he had replied to his aggressor's taunts with his own war cries …
—Wole Soyinka, Isara, 1989
die-hard fans who became truculent and violent after their team's loss
a theater critic who was notorious for his titanically truculent reviews
Reuters, NBC news, 16 Oct. 2025
France has been mired in crisis as a series of minority governments struggle to pass deficit-reduction measures through a truculent parliament, split between three ideological blocs.
—CNN Money, 12 Oct. 2025
Meanwhile, Obama was too careful; Senate Republicans were too truculent; the Steele dossier created unrealistic expectations.
—Keith Gessen, New Yorker, 16 July 2025
Not the first imaginative, truculent Irishman to play the game, nor the last, McCracken’s militancy and principles put him at odds with the Irish Football Association.
—Michael Cox, New York Times, 12 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for truculent
Cite this Entry
“Truculent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truculent. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
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truculent
adjective
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