What's the difference between pugnacious and truculent?

Pugnacious


Definition:

  • (a.) Disposed to fight; inclined to fighting; quarrelsome; fighting.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He even has a soft spot for the Cockney Rejects, pugnacious purveyors of football singalongs.
  • (2) He caught sight of Marine Le Pen on a TV politics show in 2007, inveighing against the European Union in the pugnacious style she honed as a lawyer, warning the government to “stop taking the people for fools”.
  • (3) Nel, nicknamed "the pitbull", is diminutive and pugnacious and a sharp contrast to the tall, silver-haired, urbane Roux.
  • (4) The Guardian has found that Trump’s pugnacious campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski , has more experience in this field than was previously known, having resorted to litigation in his only election as a candidate himself.
  • (5) It appeared to be designed as a permanent – and pugnacious – installation, with none of the usual ropes and pulleys.
  • (6) I wouldn’t have gone in.” National security also sparked the standout clash of the night, when Paul, the libertarian who did most in the Senate to end the bulk collection of phone records in the wake of the disclosures from the whistleblower Edward Snowden , collided with Chris Christie, the pugnacious New Jersey governor.
  • (7) On Friday morning, Rahm Emanuel, the brilliantly pugnacious mayor of Chicago, and former White House chief of staff, told me that, as the grandson of a migrant, he would not assist Trump’s attempts to entrap undocumented children, but instead continue to support them through his community college programme.
  • (8) The pugnacious Schulberg rejected this and broke with party discipline, publishing What Makes Sammy Run?
  • (9) McBride, a football-loving and pugnacious former Treasury civil servant drawn into Brown's inner circle, paid yesterday with his career.
  • (10) "Blowing up the Red Road eyesores is a typically pugnacious Glaswegian way of celebrating the Games.
  • (11) Getting out of the third round proved as tough as he suspected for Dimitrov, who needed three hours and 28 minutes to subdue the pugnacious crowd favourite Marcos Baghdatis in five competitive sets in the early-afternoon heat.
  • (12) Montgomerie, who now edits the Times comment section, had suggested that Gove was excessively "pugnacious and confrontational" in his dealings with the teaching profession.
  • (13) Despite Blanco’s refusal, Ramirez announced he was imposing state command over Cuernavaca’s police, and he suggested dark forces were influencing the pugnacious former athlete, who has never before held public office.
  • (14) Rumpole of the Bailey, the pugnacious barrister created by John Mortimer, of course constantly resisted promotion to the bench.
  • (15) He certainly demonstrates a similar steely resolve, pugnaciousness and disdain for consensus politics that was the hallmark of the Iron Lady.
  • (16) The pugnacious Bannon, a former head of the rightwing Bretibart News who has been dubbed “Trump’s Rasputin”, spoke as if on permanent war footing.
  • (17) • China's "newly pugnacious" foreign policy is "losing friends worldwide", the US ambassador to Beijing argued in a cable .
  • (18) Chris Christie , the pugnacious governor of New Jersey who staked his 2016 presidential campaign on a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, has suspended his candidacy after winning less than 10% of the vote on Tuesday, a campaign staffer confirmed to the Guardian.
  • (19) Erdoğan said voters had opted for stability, but in characteristically pugnacious form in Istanbul, he also attacked the global media and its criticism of him.
  • (20) As charming and as pugnacious as ever, he survived what might have been disgrace and was certainly unpopularity as an active, cheerful and still optimistic man.

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.