Truculent

truculent

adjective tru·cu·lent \ˈtrə-kyə-lənt also ˈtrü-\

: easily annoyed or angered and likely to argue

Full Definition of TRUCULENT

: feeling or displaying ferocity : cruel, savage

: scathingly harsh : vitriolic <truculent criticism>

: aggressively self-assertive : belligerent

— tru·cu·lent·ly adverb

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Examples of TRUCULENT

The hard work is to demonstrate exactly how the outsize Churchillian personality, so truculent, so impulsive, so often profoundly wrongheaded, became, in the dark spring of 1940, just what was needed for national survival. —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
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Latin truculentus, from truc-, trux savage; perhaps akin to Middle Irish trú doomed person

First Known Use: circa 1540