Literary notes about pugnacious (AI summary)
Literary authors employ "pugnacious" to evoke an inherent readiness for conflict and a bold, often aggressive temperament in both characters and creatures. The term is used to describe a range of personalities—from a man whose frowning, combative mood quickly dissipates as he relaxes his fists ([1]) to a character whose very visage exudes a fighting spirit, as when a small, sturdy man is noted for his strong, pugnacious face ([2]). It also appears in broader social and natural contexts, linking historic notions of combativeness, as seen in allegorical debates about honor and victory ([3]), to an animal’s instinctive readiness to quarrel ([4]). Its etymological nod to Latin origins ([5]) deepens the word’s resonance, reinforcing how a single term can capture both human defiance and the untamed vigor of nature.
- Let a man in pugnacious mood relax his face and his fists and in a very short time his anger vanishes.
— from Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency) by Rasmus Larssen Alsaker - The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face.
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - For Glaucon, who is always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus' retirement; he wanted to have the battle out.
— from The Republic by Plato - The male salmon is as pugnacious as the little stickleback; and so is the male trout, as I hear from Dr. Gunther.
— from The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin - pugn-ax = pugnacious formed from pugnare = to fight . cŭp-idus = eager „ cupere
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce
