What's the difference between brutal and ruffian?

Brutal


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a brute; as, brutal nature.
  • (a.) Like a brute; savage; cruel; inhuman; brutish; unfeeling; merciless; gross; as, brutal manners.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The arrest of the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, as well as a photographer and her partner, is a brutal reminder of the distance between President Hassan Rouhani’s reforming promises and his willingness to act.
  • (2) The analysis of the causes of hunger current in the 1970's can be summarized somewhat brutally as follows.
  • (3) Their brutality seems to have been fairly even-handed, or if it wasn't, the men surely suffered enough not to be presented as the winners of the atrocity.
  • (4) It hasn't been so exposed to the brutal learning culture Scotland Yard has been through with cases like Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbié.
  • (5) My whole world was turned upside down by the brutality of it.
  • (6) The Florida senator said: “This simplistic notion that ‘leave Assad there because he’s a brutal killer, but he’s not as bad as what’s going to follow him’ is a fundamental and simplistic and dangerous misunderstanding of the reality of the region.” It’s unclear though how much the actual debate about policy between the two senators stood out from the political carnival surrounding them.
  • (7) "They have a retaliatory doctrine," Salah argued of the police, whose brutality was a major cause of Egypt's 2011 uprising , but who have become more popular after backing Morsi's overthrow.
  • (8) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
  • (9) "It's horrible and brutal to be that far back and searching for those gears and they're not there," O'Hare admitted.
  • (10) The Shah's secret police – Savak – became increasingly brutal, ultimately detaining without trial and torturing tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.
  • (11) These are the first western depictions of our animals, and what they represent are the inception of the specific cultural politics which your nation forced on my continent, its land and its people with unhesitating colonial brutality.
  • (12) Coming shortly after the regime's successful third nuclear weapons test, Rodman's public declaration that he was Kim's "friend for life ", and the young premier's ability to parade his western visitors on state media, angered critics who argued that the country's ghastly poverty and brutal human rights violations were inadequately reflected.
  • (13) The pro-free-market newspaper soon fell victim to brutal market forces.
  • (14) Zhang Gaoping, 47, told state media that he and his nephew were subject to seven days of brutal interrogation before trial – sleep deprivation, starvation, cigarette burns.
  • (15) Onset is generally brutal, as in acute enteritis or an extradigestive infection (ENT...) but persists, or else, more often, the syndrome appears insidiously over several days.
  • (16) As the brutality of the crackdown increased, there were reports of some small-scale defections within the Syrian army.
  • (17) Police said the brutal injuries to the boy clearly caused his death and investigators were not looking for anyone else.
  • (18) If so, they will be more jihadist, sectarian, brutal and anti-western when they take Damascus.
  • (19) Concentrate on the way he constructs the space of an interior or orchestrates a sensual camera movement that he invented himself - the camera gliding on unseen tracks in one direction while uncannily panning in another direction - and you perceive how each Dreyer film almost brutally reconstructs the universe rather than accepting it as a familiar given.
  • (20) Everything that was, is more: brutality, injustice, poverty, anger; but also clarity, knowledge, understanding and, possibly, determination.

Ruffian


Definition:

  • (n.) A pimp; a pander; also, a paramour.
  • (n.) A boisterous, cruel, brutal fellow; a desperate fellow ready for murderous or cruel deeds; a cutthroat.
  • (a.) brutal; cruel; savagely boisterous; murderous; as, ruffian rage.
  • (v. i.) To play the ruffian; to rage; to raise tumult.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Behind the Manchester ruffian image, they were conscientious people.
  • (2) These trousers, it later transpired, cost £995, and Nicky Morgan duly seized that predictable bait and snorted, “I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress.” After all, she added, while possibly patting a young local ruffian on the head, “My barometer is always, ‘How am I going to explain this in Loughborough market?” I think this was Morgan’s clueless way of saying she keeps it real, but it didn’t really work because those trousers looked exactly like the kind of thing sold in my local market, which, just this weekend, alongside the £1 Christmas crackers, was selling leather bustiers and disgusting, studded leather jackets.
  • (3) Two centuries later, Ruskin echoed these sentiments: Caravaggio, he claimed, painted “for the sake of the shadows”, and he was a “ruffian … distinguished only by his preference for candlelight and reinforcement of villainy”.
  • (4) Budget night at the opera: 28 March 1980 The souvenir programme (with it being a gala night, the programme cost more than a seat in some other theatres) promised "knights, esquires, ladies, ruffians, pages, maskers, soldiers, ushers, halberdiers, cupbearers and gondoliers."
  • (5) With their tight jeans and updated teddy-boy styles, the four gaff lads exude rough sex: they could have walked straight out of the Smiths's "Rusholme Ruffians" from the album Meat is Murder.