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brutish

brutish

13 7.2
Cruel and violent, showing no kindness
  • adjective
  • /ˈbruːtɪʃ/
  • Offensive
: bestial
  • The dictator's brutish behavior left the citizens in fear and despair.
  • nasty and brutish
  • brutish and short
  • solitary, nasty, brutish

And our lives were, in his words, nasty, brutish and short.

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Examples

  • It's just that life in the Project tends to be mean, nasty, brutish, and short.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • And it's Thomas Hobbes who said that before the state, human life was solitary, poor and nasty, brutish and short, right.

  • I mean, life is so short and sometimes brutish and nasty.

  • And our lives were, in his words, nasty, brutish and short.

  • "Life is nasty, brutish and short," as the man said.

  • "Life, by its very nature, is nasty, brutish and short."

  • It's nasty, it's brutish, it's short, but it's discernible.

  • It's solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

  • And the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

  • Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a state of nature the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Synonyms

brutal
vsbrutish
  • NSFW
230 4.8

Very cruel and violent, causing pain or suffering

is about insensitivity rather than active willingness to harm
abrasive
vsbrutish
20 6.5

Showing little concern for other people's feelings

is about coarse lack of feeling rather than rude directness
beastly
vsbrutish
11 6.5

Cruel and showing no care for other people like an animal

is similar but focuses more on blunt insensitivity than cruelty
bestial
vsbrutish
6 8.5

Very cruel and violent like an angry wild animal

is mainly about lacking feeling rather than violent savagery

Antonyms

99 3.4

Showing kindness and care to people or animals to avoid suffering

refined
  • Formal
25 4.1

Showing elegant, polite manners and good taste

How Brutish

bestial
6 8.5
inhuman
34 6.0
brutish
  • Offensive
13 7.2
uncaring
18 4.2
insensitive
119 4.6

Surface Forms

brutish positive
brutisher comparative
brutishest superlative

Morphology

brutish = brute (transparent) = brute + ish

Formed by adding the productive suffix '-ish' to 'brute', yielding an adjective meaning 'resembling a brute', which is directly inferable from the base.

Etymology

Brutish comes from the simple word brute, which comes from Latin brutus meaning 'heavy' or 'dull'. A brute came to mean an animal or a violent person, so brutish means 'like an animal' or 'without human feeling'.