(superl.) Of a rough or stern manner, voice, or countenance; sour; surly; severe; harsh.
Example Sentences:
(1) A gruff intellectual alternately nicknamed “Mad Dog” and “the warrior monk,” Mattis is deeply respected in much of the foreign policy establishment, despite notably clashing with the Obama administration over his more hawkish views on Iran.
(2) Ricky Gervais: 'It’s always about people, it’s always about ego' Read more Take the film’s opening minute, in which gruff US comedian Jim Norton cameos as an absurdly camp male prostitute eager to offer radio journalist Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) a “freebie”.
(3) I still am.” For many Republican primary voters, the question is whether the unassuming if somewhat gruff Paul – who insisted on no mayo in the ham and cheese sandwich he ordered for lunch – ever was particularly interesting, or if voters were only attracted to the idiosyncratic, 21st-century libertarianism he expounds.
(4) At the booth in between the never-was of Windsor and the has-been of Detroit, the officer I happened to draw had a gruff belly and the mysterious air of intentional inscrutability, like a troll under a bridge in a fairytale.
(5) The then manager was Walter Smith, a gruff but dignified Scot who had enjoyed considerable success at Rangers a decade earlier.
(6) Ingham, whose gruffness camouflages an intellect of silken agility, was addressing the specific question of his boss’s public image, and asking, by implication, if the Iron Lady could – well – melt, just a little.
(7) The film critic, who says Statham's name with an approximation of his low, gruff cockney, likes the chance the actor took with Hummingbird and also admires his 2011 film Blitz , co-starring Paddy Considine.
(8) Many had come for the first time to witness the much-vaunted oratorical skills of France’s youngest MP – and to see how she compared to her grandfather, the gruff former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the Front National in 1972 and led it to become the most successful far-right party in western Europe.
(9) Get the metal pan!” Martin jokes, aping the Hollywood convention of a gruff doctor dropping each slug into a brass surgical tray with a solid “plink”.
(10) Rajapaksa's folksy, gruff bonhomie and his canny direction of development funds to the countryside has paid dividends at successive polls.
(11) His manner was often gruff and rude, even to those he liked: Isabella Blow, (pictured right with McQueen) who was broke when she bought his entire first collection and had to pay for it in installments, told me once how he used to march her to the cashpoint every week to get £50 out.
(12) Many of them were adapted for television or made into feature films; the Wexford books in particular were an enormous success on TV, with the actor George Baker playing Wexford as a big, gruff, rural policeman, solving crime in the fictional Sussex town of Kingsmarkham.
(13) But his less enthusiastic answer about Bannon comes amid reports of infighting in the Trump White House, all of which place the gruff, irascible Bannon at the center.
(14) Jenkins is small, but she has a surprisingly gruff voice, rising to a growl when she is annoyed.
(15) "I'm extremely well," he says with jovial gruffness.
(16) Luther starts in the UK on Tuesday, 9pm, BBC1 LUTHER: THE SERIES THREE LINEUP John Luther Gruff of voice, red of eye, natty of coat, the maverick DCI is good at solving crime, bad at life.
(17) His voice sounded gruff, his eyes still fixed on my breasts as he continued the fierce stroking and caressing.
(18) The White House did not announce the meeting until late on Thursday, prompting a gruff complaint from Beijing, in what has become something of a diplomatic ritual whenever Obama meets the exiled Buddhist monk.
(19) Tens of thousands of west of Scotland men derived a gruff pride in working hard for their money and providing food and shelter for their families.
(20) The show has made a star of one year 9 boy, 13-year-old Ryan Ward, a gruff-voiced, latte-drinking philosopher who wants to be a firefighter, a police officer or an actor.
Stocky
Definition:
(a.) Short and thick; thick rather than tall or corpulent.
(a.) Headstrong.
Example Sentences:
(1) Since taking office as prime minister for the second time a year ago, stocky, tousle-haired Abe, 59, has avoided hotheaded actions and kept his political powder dry.
(2) A stocky man with a round face and belly, and skinny legs revealed beneath his shorts, he answered to Dr T or, among friends, Johnny, and when he smiled, his eyes crinkled nearly shut.
(3) Malatesta, a short, stocky Australian never seen without a hat, nods sagely.
(4) Stocky and shaven-headed, Clapper is part boardroom, part boxer.
(5) A 53-year-old man with a short stocky build, mild mental retardation, gynecomastia and hypogonadism was found to have a small ring Y chromosome unassociated with mosaicism.
(6) The patient had such clinical manifestations as short stature with low body weight, thin limbs and stocky trunk, senile face, early graying hair, highpitched voice, bilateral cataracts, osteoporosis, sclerodermia-like signs, flat feet, tendency toward diabetes mellitus and parental consanguinity.
(7) The stocky, powerful dwarf inexorably cuts through foes, for instance – a far cry from the speedy elf's approach or the wizard's all-encompassing magic.
(8) Batmanglij, who was born to Iranian émigré parents 29 years ago and grew up in Washington DC, is short and stocky with close-cropped black hair.
(9) He is a stocky, soft-cheeked 34-year-old Korean man wearing a shiny dinner jacket, co-respondent shoes without socks and enough make-up to make Katie Price seem like an ambassador for the natural look.
(10) Patrons were categorized by visual appraisal into forty-eight cross-classified groups according to sex (male, female), body build (slender, sturdy, stocky, obese), height (tall, average, short), and age (less than and more than thirty years of age).
(11) In person he's quite offhand, an odd mixture of shy and intensely self-assured, and with his stocky build and salt-and-pepper beard he conveys the impression of a very clever badger, burrowing away in the undergrowth of economic detail, ready to give quite a sharp bite if you get in his way.
(12) And we shouldn’t forget that.” Stocky, balding and, though a good decade older, every bit as passionate about his dairying as Jones, Hook operates a profoundly different business model.
(13) Facebook employee Tom Stocky took paternity leave for four months to stay at home with his first child.
(14) The red caps are led by Christian Troadec, a stocky former journalist who has been mayor of Carhaix on a leftwing ticket for 12 years.
(15) He speaks with a London accent and is of stocky build.
(16) Thus, all the stocky muscles lying close to an articulation do not behave in the same way.
(17) Boukadida, a short, stocky man with a full beard, was trying to escape arrest when pushed from a second-floor window by police in his home town of Sousse in November.
(18) The "world team" played lackadaisical football, letting passes slide through and melting away whenever Kadyrov, stocky and heavy on his feet, had the ball.
(19) He is of stocky build and has a tattoo on his hand.
(20) The room was full of sunlight, and now I saw him clearly: a stocky man, thirties, unkempt, with a round friendly face and unruly hair.