truculent – English adjective declension

English adjective forms of truculent

Adjective: truculent

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Perifrastic

Comparativemore truculent
Superlativemost truculent

Sample Sentences

  • 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. [1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC:]
  • His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur. [1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 16:]
  • 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. [1847, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter VI, in Jane Eyre, volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 102:]
  • Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan’s threats. [1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg, published March 1915, →OCLC:]
  • 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. [1877, David Magarshack, chapter 12, in Anna Karenina, part 6, translation of original by Leo Tolstoy:]
  • 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. [1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 10, in The Beasts of Tarzan, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published March 1916, →OCLC:]
  • 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. [1992, Joel Feinberg, “The Social Importance of Moral Rights”, in Philosophical Perspectives, Ethics, page 195:]
  • These bitches is getting truculent. [2013 February 11, Phil Bronstein, quoting SEAL Team Six Member, “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed”, in Esquire Magazine:]
  • Voltaire is never either gross or truculent. [1872, John Morley, Voltaire:]
  • […] 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. [1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 10, in The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday Adventure, London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Co.; New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Co., →OCLC:]
  • 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. [1922, Rafael Sabatini, chapter XVI, in Captain Blood:]
  • More or less truculent Plagues. [1665, Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague … with several waies for purifying the air in houses, streets:]

Etymology

First attested circa 1540, from Middle French, from Latin truculentus (“fierce, savage”), from trux (“fierce, wild”). See: Latin Adjectives 'truculentus'.