truculent

Cruel or savage.

The truculent soldiers gave us a steely-eyed stare.

She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.

Defiant or uncompromising.

In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.

Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan’s threats.

Eager or quick to argue, fight or start a conflict.

She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want any quarrel; she blamed him for wanting one, but she could not help assuming a truculent attitude.

If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while the former was eating.

Violent; rude; scathing; savage; harsh.

Voltaire is never either gross or truculent.

[…] or again, the first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog.

Destructive; deadly.

More or less truculent Plagues.