brutish

English

Etymology

From brute + -ish

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈbɹʊut.ɪʃ/
  • Rhymes: -ʊutɪʃ

Adjective

brutish (comparative more brutish, superlative most brutish)

  1. Of, or in the manner of a brute
  2. Bestial; lacking human sensibility

Quotations

  • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
    No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 3, ch. IX, Working Aristocracy
    The haggard despair of Cotton-factory, Coal-mine operatives, Chandos Farm-labourers, in these days, is painful to behold; but not so painful, hideous to the inner sense, as the brutish god-forgetting Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, and Life-theory, which we hear jangled on all hands of us […]
  • 2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11:
    But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Further reading

  • brutish in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
  • brutish in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
  • brutish at OneLook Dictionary Search
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