Pugnacious

adj

adj ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Naturally aggressive or hostile; combative; belligerent; bellicose.

    "Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious, in the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a fight, no propense love of quarrelling."

Adjective
  1. 1
    ready and able to resort to force or violence wordnet
  2. 2
    tough and callous by virtue of experience wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
aggressivecombativequarrelsomeantagonisticbattlingbellicose

Example

More examples

"Henry Baskerville was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face."

Etymology

From the stem of Latin pugnāx + -ous, from pugnō (“I fight”), from pugnus (“fist”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.