torvid

comparative more torvid · superlative most torvid

1. obsoletepoeticFierce, stern.

   […] but yesterday his breath / Aw’d Rome, and his least torved frown was death.

   a. 1632, John Webster, Appius and Virginia; republished as William Hazlitt, editor, The Dramatic Works of John Webster, volume 3, 1857, page 219

   2 more examples

   That wary labourers, in passing by, / May not suspect his master's idle life, / Lest, urg’d by smiling truth or torvid jealousy, / They carry information to the little Nimrod of the borough town

   1803, George Ardley, “Autumn Leaves; a descriptive Poem”, in The Universal Magazine, volume 1, number 5, published May 1804, page 514

   With torvid brow Saturnia gazed upon / Ixion, and the toiling Sisyphon, / And asked why he alone selected was / To bear such punishment […]

   1896, Ovid, translated by John Benson Rose, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, page 110, lines 420–3