Pugnacity

//pʌɡˈnæsəti// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or characteristic of being aggressive or combative. uncountable, usually

    "His sister is out front, cleaning her gun with that intimidating pugnacity that has most of the men in town keeping well clear of her."

  2. 2
    a natural disposition to be hostile wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
aggressionaggressivenessaggressivenessantagonismattackbelligerence

Example

More examples

"His sister is out front, cleaning her gun with that intimidating pugnacity that has most of the men in town keeping well clear of her."

Etymology

From pugnac(ious) + -ity, from Latin pugnacitas.

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