thug

plural thugs

1. A person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization.
2. A violent, aggressive, or truculent person.

   They call you a land of license—free but to thug and thief.

   1915, Cale Young Rice, “My Country”, in Collected Plays and Poems, page 342

   2 more examples

   Every summer brought the prospect of the dragonships snaking their way upriver, each vessel filled with thirty or more rapacious thugs.

   1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 77

   I pushed up out of my chaise and headed for the miniten court. Leah handed me her thug as I walked past her.

   2021, Anna Durand, Natural Satisfaction

3. A criminal that extorts people.
4. A person who use intimidation to coerce others.
5. historicalOne of a band of assassins formerly active in northern India who worshipped Kali and sacrificed their victims to her.

   Synonyms: phansigar

6. African-American VernacularOne who, usually as a result of social disadvantage, has turned to committing crimes (e.g. selling drugs, robbery, assault, etc.) to make a living; a gangsta.
7. agricultureAn overvigorous plant that spreads and dominates the flowerbed.
8. A wooden bat used in the game of miniten, fitting around the player's hand.

present singular third person thugs · participle present thugging · participle past thugged · past thugged

1. informaltransitiveTo commit acts of thuggery, to live the life of a thug, to menace, to commit crime.

   C.C. and Company. Another story about the young American motor-cycle hoodlum gangs: raping, thugging and robbing their way along the roads.

   1972, F. Maurice Speed, Film Review, page 219

   2 more examples

   Mr. Ingleby ascertained at the office—after threading the mazes of passage and staircase as though he expected momently to be Thugged—that his nephew had not yet come.

   1854, My Ducats and My Daughter, volume II, page 247

   The report then records the arrest of the whole force of the union paper, the Victor Record, the forced resignation of many other civil officers in the Cripple Creek district who were in sympathy with the miners, […] the severe thugging of many of the well-known labor organizers,

   1968, Harry Wellington Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor Struggle, page 302

2. informaltransitive(often with out) To appear as a thug; to dress and act in a manner reminiscent of a thug.

   Oh. Besides Allen Iverson, basketball players don’t be thugged out enough for me. I like me a roughneck.

   2006, Katina King, Ride Wit’ Me, page 11

   2 more examples

   I don’t thug out, but I’m not Wall Street, either. Russell Simmons and Puffy have clothes for this look in the affordable range.

   2003 April, Dorian Missick, quotee, “Clothesline: Dorian Missick”, in Playboy Magazine, page 44

   Well, I’d like to see more positive images of black men. Ones that don’t just go on about having a big dick, thugging and bashing on some girl.

   2017, Todd Dedman, quoting research participant ‘Luke’, Purists and Peripherals: Hip-hop and Grime Subcultures, page 169