truculence

English

Alternative forms

• truculency

Etymology

From French truculence, from Latin truculentia.

Noun

truculence (usually uncountable, plural truculences)

1. 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

• aggressiveness
• defiance
• ferociousness
• savageness
• truculency

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin truculentia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tʁy.ky.lɑ̃s/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

truculence f (plural truculences)

1. truculence (eagerness to fight)

Related terms

• truculent

Further reading

• “truculence”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.