thuggish

adj

1. (derogatory)Characterized by thuggery; behaving in a violent or intimidating way; appearing to be violent or intimidating.

   “Their thuggish manner made continuing negotiations very difficult.”

   “We were Jews—and not only were we not inferior to the goyim who beat us at football, but the chances were that because we could not commit our hearts to victory in such a thuggish game, we were superior!”

   “They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.”

   “He said gardaí had responded professionally to “thuggish violence” in the area and those arrested would be “charged, named and dealt with relentlessly” by the criminal justice system.”

   “It is there in the rabid ideology underpinning Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) thuggish assault on immigrants in Minneapolis.”

2. (obsolete)Resembling or characteristic of the assassins known as thugs or thuggees (often capitalized in this sense).

   “[…] beside the deceitfulness of the heart and the carnality common to all men, the deep ignorance of the heathen, the abjectness of their social condition, their vain but venerated traditions, their time-honored customs of profligacy, impelling to infanticide, parricide, Thuggish murders, and cannibalism—all conflict steadily with the holiest efforts to transform them into symmetrical Christians.”

   “Occasionally you might have beheld us chasing up scores of Dorkings,—which had been our admiration for the twelvemonth, and massacreing them remorselessly for the public good: our turkeys and geese, too, were in continual jeopardy of their lives. But,—these Thuggish propensities notwithstanding, we took a paternal interest in our feathered family.”

   “There are not wanting in this Christian land The breast remorseless and the Thuggish hand,”