Noun: thug
Sample Sentences
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They call you a land of license—free but to thug and thief. [1915, Cale Young Rice, “My Country”, in Collected Plays and Poems, page 342:]
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Every summer brought the prospect of the dragonships snaking their way upriver, each vessel filled with thirty or more rapacious thugs. [1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 77:]
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I pushed up out of my chaise and headed for the miniten court. Leah handed me her thug as I walked past her. [2021, Anna Durand, Natural Satisfaction:]
Nouns inflected like thug
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Borrowed from Hindustani ठग (ṭhag) / ٹھگ (ṭhag, “swindler, fraud, cheat”), further derived from Prakrit 𑀞𑀕 (ṭhaga), of uncertain origin. See there for more.
2. Thuggee was a network of gangs in India from the 17th century to the 19th century who robbed and murdered travellers, often by strangling. During British Imperial rule of India, many Indian words passed into common English, and by 1810 thug referred to a member of these Indian gangs. The sense was adopted more generally as "ruffian, cutthroat, and cruel robber" by 1839. Perhaps related to English thatch, deck. See: English Nouns '
thatch'.
Verbs referencing "thug"
French Nouns
thug.