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Truculence   Listen
Truculence

noun
1.
Obstreperous and defiant aggressiveness.  Synonym: truculency.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Truculence" Quotes from Famous Books



... proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between world leadership and imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... But his natural truculence, and his not altogether unnatural exultation at the frustration of these plans for his own upsetting, overcame all else. Of regret for their personal loss and his own he ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... wonders take place in our presence?" asked Mrs. Quigg, who had returned to something like her original truculence of doubt. "Why should you and Brierly ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... important influence in forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland represented—civil service reform; the cleansing of politics, state and national; the reduction in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without degenerating into truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American citizens; a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine that the Government was something to be served and not something to be plundered—Page became an active ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... for thought. In desperate haste, we inched our way along. Abud had seen the peril, too, and lost all his truculence in the face of the greater danger. He clawed after us, intent only on reaching whatever ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... got no cause neether," came the voice from the darkness, defiant almost to truculence. "I only ad but the two talents—lovin and fightin; and they can't say I've id eether o them up in a napkin. They can't chuck that in ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... he kept repeating over and over, looking at the different documents. "The King promises to act on this matter in a few days, to-morrow, probably. Chamillard is against us; he seems all powerful now; the King loves him for his truculence. But these will help, yes, these will help." And again he ran through the various papers with business-like swiftness. His fashionable air and the perfumed handkerchief were alike laid aside. Now I could see the resemblance between him and his ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... cartoon which represented a human weather-vane continually pointing to the East, no matter from what quarter the wind blew. He recognised himself, and laughed when he saw me—rather pleased, in fact, but in that laugh there was a sort of truculence, as if the man had the salt taste of blood at ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... affair had aroused a combative spirit amongst the men of the assembly. Instantly a spirit of aggression, of truculence, swelled up underneath waistcoats and starched shirt bosoms. More than one offender was promptly asked to "step outside." It was like young bucks excited by an encounter of stags, lowering their horns upon the slightest provocation, showing off before the does and fawns. Old quarrels ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... House of Commons, it was powerfully opposed by Gladstone; but the House was dead against him, and Sir William Harcourt, who, six months before, had been his Solicitor-General, distinguished himself by the truculence with which he assailed the Ritualists. On the 5th of August, Gladstone wrote to his wife: "An able but yet frantic tirade from Harcourt, extremely bad in tone and taste, and chiefly aimed at poor me.... I have really treated him with forbearance before, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... the buffalo first among the dangerous beasts. This is not my own opinion, but he is certainly dangerous enough. He possesses the size, power, and truculence of the rhinoceros, together with all that animal's keenness of scent and hearing but with a sharpness of vision the rhinoceros has not. While not as clever as either the lion or the elephant, he is tricky enough when angered to circle back for the purpose of attacking his ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... entered the room immediately afterwards was of a very different type. His mode of entry was of another description. Whereas the man of blood swaggered in with an air of nervous truculence, as if he were afraid that some one was desirous of disputing his equality, the next comer crept in softly, and closed the door with accuracy. He was the incarnation of benevolence—in the best sense of the word, a sweet old man—looking out upon the world through large tinted spectacles with a beam ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... the vintage of the Nineteen-Twenties was the avarice of the driver. For when he had been given the address of the Athenais' apartment, he announced with vinous truculence that his whim inclined to precisely the opposite direction, gathered up the reins, clucked in peremptory fashion to the nag (which sagely paid no attention to him whatsoever) and consented only to change his mind when promised a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... he located Storri; and thereupon he bent upon said patrician such an iron stare of confident insolence that the object of it was appreciably worried, turning white, then red, then white, and in the finish leaving the room, unable to sustain himself in the face of so much triumph and truculence. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... to attend to it at once," declared Lieut. Feraud, with extreme truculence. "If you are thinking of displaying your airs and graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... to tell him that Maurice was away for ten days. She felt that he knew that. There was a certain truculence in his walk which annoyed her; but she was wonderingly conscious of the fact that she was no longer afraid of him. This feeling had as yet taken no definite shape. She did not know what she felt, but she knew that there was no fear ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... to accomplish his purpose, very quietly, but effectually. A century and a quarter later, another foreigner, the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, was allowed by the American Government to weave an even more menacing plot, but the sound sense of the country awoke in time to sweep him and his truculence and his conspiracies ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... and the Machine now gave heed. The corporations saw that it would be suicidal to bring down on themselves the avalanche of fury which was accumulating. The bill passed. Roosevelt had set a precedent for controlling corporate truculence. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Virginians, and turned over the rest to Governor Peirpoint for similar use. [Footnote: In some documents which fell into our hands we found a series of resolutions passed at a meeting in the spring at which one of the companies now with Wise was organized. It shows the melodramatic truculence which was echoed in the exhortations of the general and of other men who should have had more judgment. The ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... of such merciful forgiveness, rouses his righteous indignation. The unmercifulness of Christian people is a worse sin than many a deed that goes by very ugly names amongst men. And so the judgment that falls upon this evil-doer, who, by his truculence to his fellow-servant, had betrayed the baseness of his nature and the ingratitude of his heart, is, 'Put him back where he was! Tie the two and a quarter millions round his neck again! Let us see what he will do by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of a more suitable person?" he asked, with a faint note of truculence in his tone. "You have seen us all together. I don't wish to flatter myself, but as regards education, service to the cause, familiarity with public speaking and the number of those ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in the little incident we have just related, was much too strong for the ill-trained feelings of the Neapolitan and his companions. They not only let all the menials pass unquestioned also, but it was some little time before their vigilance resumed its former truculence. The two or three travellers that succeeded had the benefit of this fortunate change ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... smart," and these are drawn in "St. Ronan's Well." But we may believe that, even there, manners are no longer quite so hideous as in the little Tweedside watering-place. The extinction of duelling has destroyed, or nearly destroyed, the swaggering style of truculence; people could not behave as Mowbray and Sir Bingo behave to Tyrrel, in the after-dinner scene. The Man of Peace, the great MacTurk, with his harangues translated from the language of Ossian, is no longer needed, and no longer possible. Supposing manners to be correctly described in "St. Ronan's," ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Truculence" :   belligerence, aggressiveness, pugnacity, truculent



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