bellicose

What it means

1. Warlike or combative in nature; aggressively hostile.

   You don't have to be so bellicose, and we can work out a peaceful solution.

   3 more examples

   CHINA sent both bellicose and conciliatory signals yesterday as tension continued in the Taiwan Strait over Chinese military exercises and the deployment of US naval battle groups.

   1996 March 15, James Pringle, “Peking sends out mixed signals”, in The Times, number 65,528, →ISSN, →OCLC, Overseas News, page 14, column 8

   The core Ice Age cast—wooly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), sabertooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary), and sloth Sid (John Leguizamo)—are set adrift, sailing the high seas on a chunk of ice until they collide with a bellicose primate (Peter Dinklage).

   2012 July 12, Sam Adams, “Ice Age: Continental Drift”, in AV Club

   [Greenland's current Prime Minister Múte] Egede has insisted that Greenland is not for sale and he framed the polling partly as a referendum on Trump's seemingly bellicose bullying, saying the election was a "fateful choice."

   2025 March 13, Scott Neuman, Willem Marx, “https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5325949/greenland-elections-trump-independence”, in NPR

   Synonyms: belligerent, pugnacious

In a sentence

You don't have to be so bellicose, and we can work out a peaceful solution.

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*dewh₂-der.?
2. Proto-Italic*dwenos
3. Old Latin*duenelos?
4. Old Latinduellum
5. Old Latinduellicus
6. Latinbellicus
7. Latinbellicum signumellip.?
8. Latinbellicum
9. Proto-Indo-European*h₃ed-
10. Proto-Indo-European*h₃édosder.?
11. Latinbellicosus
12. Middle Englishbellicose
13. Englishbellicose

From Middle English bellicose, from Latin bellicosus.