pugnacious
adjective
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Pugnacious individuals are often looking for a fight. While unpleasant, at least their fists are packing an etymological punch. Pugnacious comes from the Latin verb pugnare (meaning "to fight"), which in turn comes from the Latin word for "fist," pugnus. Another Latin word related to pugnus is pugil, meaning "boxer." Pugil is the source of our word pugilist, which means "fighter" and is used especially of professional boxers. Pugnare has also given us impugn ("to assail by words or arguments"), oppugn ("to fight against"), and repugnant (which is now used primarily in the sense of "exciting distaste or aversion," but which has also meant "characterized by contradictory opposition" and "hostile").
Synonyms
Examples of pugnacious in a Sentence
Pete Bodo, New York Times, 22 Oct. 1995
Herz sees himself as a pugnacious sardine going up against rule-flouting sharks.
—Richard Wolkomir, Smithsonian, August 1992
He was a short man with heavy shoulders, a slight potbelly, puffy blue eyes, and a pugnacious expression.
—Alice Munro, New Yorker, 2 Jan. 1989
Podhoretz takes a more pugnacious and protesting stance, insisting on the word "seriousness" at all times and punctuating it with the word "moral".
—Christopher Hitchens, Times Literary Supplement, 30 May 1986
There's one pugnacious member on the committee who won't agree to anything.
a movie reviewer who is spirited, even pugnacious, when defending her opinions
Reeves Wiedeman, Vulture, 12 July 2024
The normally pugnacious Trump campaign took the rare step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe.
—Jill Colvin, Fortune, 28 Oct. 2024
Sebastian Stan plays a young Trump rising to power in the New York real estate world under the lascivious mentorship of pugnacious power broker Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
—Ryan Coleman, EW.com, 27 Oct. 2024
The pugnacious owner even claimed to have gotten into a fistfight with Dodgers fans in an elevator in the Hyatt Wilshire Hotel in 1981 after the Dodgers won three straight in L.A. to take the lead in the World Series 3-2.
—Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 25 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Pugnacious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pugnacious. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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pugnacious
adjective
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