(p. pr.) Pertaining, or tending, to war; of or relating to belligerents; as, a belligerent tone; belligerent rights.
(n.) A nation or state recognized as carrying on war; a person engaged in warfare.
Example Sentences:
(1) He could be the target of more punishing wit, as when Michael Foot, noting a tendency to be tougher abroad than at home, called him "a belligerent Bertie Wooster without even a Jeeves to restrain him."
(2) Though the exercises have given the US a chance to vent its frustration at what appears to be state-sponsored espionage and theft on an industrial scale, China has been belligerent.
(3) As well as George Dyer, there was the murderer Perry Smith in the Truman Capote story Infamous, the hot-headed mobster child-killer in Road To Perdition, the brooding Ted Hughes in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia biopic and a belligerent Mossad assassin in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.
(4) This plays into the widespread belief that Muslims are under attack from a belligerent west and its local proxies.
(5) In international affairs he has found the only posture more dangerous than belligerence – incoherence.
(6) The belligerence of 7 patients who had suffered an acute brain insult was effectively controlled by propranolol in doses of 60 to 320 mg per day.
(7) However, despite the country’s belligerent behaviour in the region and its egregious human rights record, which have long left it isolated, there is an opportunity for engagement given that prominent regime officials have indicated a willingness to reform.
(8) Asked about the status of his own job, the press secretary joked “I’m right here”, telling reporters, in a belligerent line that could have been uttered by his impersonator Melissa McCarthy: “You can keep taking your selfies.” The president was busy sowing confusion by trying a new passive-aggressive tone on Twitter , musing: “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out.
(9) Despite the pro-AV leader, Ed Miliband, having stuck his neck out a few times for the yeses, belligerent turns by grumpy old stagers such as John Reid and David Blunkett have created the impression that the people's party has no interest in giving the people more of a say.
(10) To avoid this, women in high executive office often assume a corporate persona that overcompensates by being either brittle and defensive, or Thatcher-esque in terms of belligerence.
(11) European commission upgrades growth forecast for UK economy Read more Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: “The initial belligerence of the Trump administration towards China and Japan appears to have given way to a more practicable way of doing things, and while peace may not have broken out quite yet, some welcome pragmatism does appear to be taking hold in Washington.
(12) Mattis pointedly warned North Korea to back off, pledging an “overwhelming” response to any belligerence .
(13) Germany's bureaucratic stasis contrasts with a welter of events, official and unofficial, digital, public and private, in the other former belligerent countries.
(14) For the highest purpose of a democratic government is to bring a society together and hold it together, not to divide it with fears, with rumours of wars, with acts of belligerence against other and then against its own.
(15) But if the odd local blog bristles that us lot should “go back where we came from”, the antipathy to immigrants from farther away ( 8.59% of the local population, according to a recent Oxford University study ; far lower than the 12.5% national average) is much stronger: especially to the eastern Europeans, many of whom have landed in scruffy parts of Cliftonville, where they have belligerently set about opening shops and car washes, and trying to get on with their lives.
(16) Five and a half decades of history show us that such belligerence inhibits better judgement.
(17) The White House condemned the attack as "belligerent", adding: "The United States is firmly committed to the defence of our ally … and to the maintenance of regional peace and stability."
(18) Clapper described the threats from Pyongyang as "very belligerent" and said he is "very concerned about the actions of the new young leader", Kim Jong-un .
(19) Israeli voters – including Labourites disillusioned by what they saw as Palestinian mendacity and belligerency – felt drawn to the old warrior.
(20) These conciliatory tactics did not immediately appeal to Thatcher, though she learned to swallow her belligerence.
Truculent
Definition:
(a.) Fierce; savage; ferocious; barbarous; as, the truculent inhabitants of Scythia.
(a.) Cruel; destructive; ruthless.
Example Sentences:
(1) Ferguson's truculence conceals an even deeper romantic streak.
(2) In this dance to the music of time in Britain, the Tories are sworn to maintain the hegemony of the free market and Labour to ensure that the idiot punters don’t become too truculent.
(3) Western leaders, increasingly exasperated at Iran's nuclear truculence, were little assuaged by Iran's belated admission of the site's existence, which appears to have come after Iran learned that western intelligence services were on to its secret establishment.
(4) Yet Begin made the mistake of alienating Thatcher with his truculent stance over settlement expansion, and their relationship never recovered.
(5) Wreathed in smiles and profuse apologies for delaying Chisora, after he and Andy Gray had chit-chatted with the often truculent boxer on live radio, Keys delivers some cheery advice in the TalkSport studios.
(6) Less publicly, Trump appears tacitly or explicitly to have given the green light to the Saudi royals to go on the offensive against its truculent neighbour.
(7) The business secretary understands perfectly well that the slump is all about a want of demand – and cannot be explained by rightwing fairy stories about truculent workers pricing themselves out of the market.
(8) It was just bonkers," says Alan Postlethwaite, the truculent vicar of Seascale, who was accused of being a crypto-communist for even thinking the plant might be linked to cancers.
(9) There was the truculent Ray Donovan, featuring Jon Voight; the truculent Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman as an absurdly tetchy racetrack gambler and gangster, involving much mumbling in half-lit rooms; and there was the truculent Boss, starring Kelsey Grammer as a corrupt Chicago mayor, which never quite escaped the stigma of expecting Niles Crane to burst into the room in a flap about missing his appointment to visit the newly opened downtown doll museum.
(10) The Russian foreign ministry released a truculent statement before Tillerson arrived in Moscow, noting that Russian-American relations were going through the “most difficult period since the end of the cold war”.
(11) Her face is truculent; she stares up and away from Oberon, who is apparently being restrained by a sharp-faced Puck.
(12) He took after Rabelais in his humour and certainly also in his truculence, but he was above all himself in his films as in life."
(13) No, the bigger question is this: can Europe handle democracy, however awkward and messy and downright truculent it may be?
(14) Strongly Eurosceptic, with hardline anti-abortion views and hawkish foreign policy, he established himself as a truculent minister who was not afraid to make clear his opposition to coalition policies and Cameron's "compassionate conservatism".
(15) At a later date, speaking on Oprah Winfrey's chatshow, the famously truculent Campbell refused to comment further, saying simply: "I don't want to be involved in this man's case – he has done some terrible things and I don't want to put my family in danger."
(16) Edward VI was originally painted with his legs far apart, echoing a famously truculent image of his father – but it evidently looked too peculiar in a portrait of a young boy, and so the artist changed it to a more natural stance.
(17) All patients met Asher's description for the emergency presentation, the truculence-evasiveness manner, the luxuriance of tales, the eclecticism of the alleged symptoms, the vehement request of dangerous or painful procedures and the apparent senselessness.
(18) Cross-country runs began with a truculent jog until we were out of sight of the teachers, at which point we would repair to the nearest newsagent for sweets and fags.
(19) Nevertheless I went to Old Trafford, in some way heartened by the purity of the truculence, football now having been largely rinsed of its scintillating aggression.
(20) He is one of the most skilled practitioners of the tricky art – much under-rated, sometimes mocked – of keeping the show on the road when the cameras are rolling, dealing with truculent interviewees, sometimes juggling numerous stories and at others filling airtime with informed and engaging commentary when, frankly, there's not much going on.