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Thug   Listen
noun
Thug  n.  
1.
One of an association of robbers and murderers in India who practiced murder by stealthy approaches, and from religious motives. They have been nearly exterminated by the British government.
2.
An assassin; a ruffian; a rough. "Thugs and midnight rounders."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thug" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a section of one-inch gas-pipe eight inches long. In one end of it and in the middle of it was a lead plug. One-half of it was packed tight with solder. Black Riley carried a slung-shot, being a conventional thug. "One-ear" Mike relied upon a pair of brass knucks—an ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... of his own and had displayed no talent except for winning the notice of head waiters and policemen. Old Angus says he knows well enough his son can be arrested out of most crowds just on that description alone, but who is this So-and-So old thug to be saying ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... him. He would have complied forthwith, had not Bill given an ultimatum. With a small box under his left arm, he shifted his crutch to his left fingers and slipped the free hand into his pocket, drawing forth about the wickedest-looking pistol that any thug would use. The five began backing away, the spokesman turning quite pale and the others, no doubt, feeling much as ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... love with that big thug, or if you play him for a limousine like a chorus-girl on the make, your career is gone. But if you use him for your future—well, I have a little scheme that might bounce you up to the sky in a hurry. You could have your millionaire and your ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... may seem, even criminals have human feelings in common with all of us. The old Thug who stepped aside into the bushes and prayed earnestly while his son was throwing his first strangling cloth around the throat of the English traveler—prayed for that son's honorable, successful beginning ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... of the prince of snakes, come here? I know that thou hadst fought this battle with me at my own command. I desire to know what the cause is that has brought out the ladies.' The intelligent ruler of Manipura, thug questioned by Dhananjaya, gratified him by bending his head in reverence, and then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... blade strike; but he was already pulling his swing, and it only gashed a long streak. The thug shrieked hoarsely and fell over. That left the way clear to the door; Bruce Gordon was through it and into the night in two soaring leaps. After only a few days on Mars, his legs were still hardened to Earth gravity, and he had more than ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... the South "like lightning had at last leaped forth, half startled at itself, its feet upon the ashes and the rags," its hands tight-gripped on the throat of tyrant, thug, and thief. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... the Freewill of man; and, like Diderot, he detects pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a president, a pig in a priest, an ostrich in a minister, and a goose in a chief clerk. He holds to Fortune, the {Greek: Txae} of Alcman, which is, {Greek: Eunomas te ka Peithos adelph ka Promatheas thugtaer},Chance, the sister of Order and Trust, and the daughter of Forethought. The Scandinavian Spinners of Fate were Urd (the Was, the Past), Verdandi (the Becoming, or Present), and Skuld (the To-be, or Future). He alludes to ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... No more than where he is! Probably some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu specially chosen for the purpose; obviously a man of culture, and probably of thug ancestry. I hit him—in the shoulder; but even then he ran like a hare. We've searched the ship, without result. He may have gone overboard and chanced the swim ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... the point of dancing cursing wild crying rage, and then accepts your—well, reproofs—so meekly that you come off the boil as though some one had removed you from the fire, and you feel like a low-browed thug. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... but not in this"; at another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual diseases." And he was now so tested, that these expressions were found to embody not merely an idea, but a belief. For, when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though thug owing tolerance and even existence to a Catholic, vexed Catholics in a spirit most intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge the religious liberties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... farm where, uninterrupted, they could produce 'rotgut' to supply the entire Chicago area. Have you been out there lately? Father used to call it Forest Home. The Hereford cattle that he reared topped the market. It's different now. The gates are locked. A thug stands out in the roadway to divert traffic. In the night, truckloads of corn and coal arrive to produce the 'hell-fire' that is bottled, labeled, and ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... far East, like the three enchanted kings, to Cologne; but, unlike them, she and her race have come with hate and not with love. She comes to flatter, and to deceive, and to rob, for she is a lying prophetess, and a she-Thug; she will greet you with blessings which will make your hearts rejoice, but your hearts' blood would freeze, could you hear the curses which to herself she murmurs against you; for she says, that in ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... closed in, sent a staggering left to the thug's heart and a murderous right to his chin, so that he reeled and fell as if shot—while P. Sybarite with a bound again caught the boy by the arm and whirled him out through the doorway ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... a variation of the veil of illusion. You faced your memories under the influence of that; so did I. But it would seem that the Throgs had ones worse than either of us could produce. You can't play the role of thug all over the galaxy and not store up in the subconscious a fine line of private fears and remembered enemies. We provided the means for releasing those, and they simply raised their own devils to order. Neatest justice ever rendered. It seems that the 'power' ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... acquaintances, not only on these "dark runs," but wherever one goes—both on and off duty. In the stores, along the street, on the cars, at the club, the alert reporter gathers many an important news item. The merchant, the cabman, the preacher, the barkeeper, the patrolman, the thug, the club-man, the porter, all make valuable acquaintances, as they are able often to give one stories or clues to the solution of problems that are all but invaluable to the paper. And such facts as ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... members to the kingdom of the dead. The reason is that the Thugs were forbidden to shed human blood. The sacrifice could only be accomplished through death by strangling. It might often be easy enough to fall upon solitary travellers, but woe to the Thug who in any way brought about the shedding of blood! Consequently they had to have recourse to all sorts of ingenious methods for allaying suspicion, so that their victims might be hastened into the next world according to the rites approved by their implacable goddess. They believed ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... and a sudden fear streamed into his soul. His own Indian experience told him that this man might be a Thug, and that if so, a little roll of blue silk would be a swifter, deadlier, and more untraceable weapon than knife or poison, and his thoughts went back to the 28th of ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... what a crowd! How, when shall we get past This nuisance, these unending ant-like swarms? Yet, Ptolemy, we owe thee thanks for much Since heaven received thy sire! No miscreant now Creeps Thug-like up, to maul the passer-by. What games men played erewhile—men shaped in crime, Birds of a feather, rascals every one! —We're done for, Gorgo darling—here they are, The Royal horse! Sweet sir, don't trample me! That bay—the savage!—reared ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... we were worrying away the leaden-winged hours, when suddenly thug, splash, and like a huge turtle we were floundering in the mud. 'No moving,' said the captain, 'till the tide comes up;' and so for three mortal hours we lay stuck in the mud at the edge of the great dismal swamp of Virginia. 'Ah,' ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... keep the men submissive and orderly and allow no outbreaks. As for knowledge, a public school education is ample, with such intelligence as may be supposed to go with it; and the experience of a ward heeler or a thug will ordinarily suffice to pass a candidate. As a matter of fact, the community never knows anything about its prison officials until some special scandal transpires under their administration, or unless some heaven-sent phoenix of a warden unaccountably manifests humane and enlightened tendencies. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... not done more. He never says that there is no case in which a religion may be proscribed; but he speaks of none in which a religion may be imposed. He discusses, not intolerance, but the divine authority to persecute, and pleads for a secular law. It does not appear how he would deal with a Thug. "Nemo quantumcumque peccans contra disciplinas speculativas aut operativas quascumque punitur vel arcetur in hoc saeculo praecise in quantum huiusmodi, sed in quantum peccat contra praeceptum humanae legis.... Si humana lege prohibitum fuerit haereticum aut aliter infidelem ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... undistinguishing end by sudden strangulation. This was the original defect of the plan. The sudden surprise, and the scientific noosing as with a Chilian lasso, constituted in fact a main feature of Thuggee. But still, the gradual theatrical arrangement of each Thug severally by the side of a victim, must often have roused violent suspicion, and that in time to intercept the suddenness of the murder. Now, for the sake of the dramatic effect, this interception ought more often to have been introduced, else the murders are ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... woods. Onnie says the new Irish are black scum of Limerick, and Jim Varian's language isn't printable. The old men are complaining, and altogether I feel like Louis XVI in 1789. About every day I have to send for the sheriff and have some thug arrested. A blackguard from Oil City has opened a dive just outside the property, on the road to the station, and Cameron tells me all sorts of dope is for sale in the hoarding-houses. We have cocaine-inhalers, opium-smokers, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... or sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father, "He was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug." ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... happened to Mikah Samon after the local thug in the horror outfit had bashed him with the club. This was a messy and unexpected end for the man after he had managed to survive the crash of the ship. Jason had no special affection for the under-nourished zealot, but he did owe him a life. Mikah had saved him after ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... moment—and lands a blow on the underside of the animal's throat that severs the head from the body. The gushing blood is directed to the Siva emblem close by, the head is borne triumphantly to the feet of Kali, and each thug-looking man smears his face with blood taken from the Siva symbol, and then dances madly around the carcass. Assuming that the spectacle has favorably impressed the visitor, the high executioner begs a donation with which to purchase a goat for a second sacrifice. You decline, probably ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... the trees and discovered the boundary fence came to an abrupt end at the edge of the grove. It was here Bob and Frank, he felt sure, had made their way and leaped on Higginbotham and the thug. For so he interpreted ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... deathblow, finishing stroke, coup de grace, quietus; execution &c (capital punishment) 972; judicial murder; martyrdom. butcher, slayer, murderer, Cain, assassin, terrorist, cutthroat, garroter, bravo, Thug, Moloch, matador, sabreur^; guet-a-pens; gallows, executioner &c (punishment) 975; man-eater, apache^, hatchet man [U.S.], highbinder [U.S.]. regicide, parricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, feticide, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... doubt have called it a result of the Nazarene religion, and a Thug paper an awful example of what happens when ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... Thompson (3 vols.) Social History of Smoking: Apperson The Path to Rome: Hilaire Belloc The Book of Tea: Kakuzo Happy Thoughts: F. C. Burnand Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations Margaret Ogilvy: J. M. Barrie Confessions of a Thug: Taylor General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press The Morning's War: C. E. Montague The Spirit of Man: edited by Robert Bridges The Romany Rye: Borrow Poems: Emily Dickinson Poems: George Herbert The House of Cobwebs: ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... seem to be bothering Ned. The only notice he seemed to take was to cover his eyes. A little shield with a thin slit popped down over his eye lenses. Then he moved in on the first thug. ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison

... and Louie, blood gushing from the wound, crumpled at his feet, John tossed away the neck of the bottle and barely had time to side-step the onrush of the other thug, who struck viciously at him with the fist armored with the knuckles. As they drew back John was in the position of a boxer, standing lightly on his toes, his left hand extended with the shoulder drawn up to protect his chin, which rested against his collarbone, his right ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned money, perhaps he wouldn't talk so ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... and clumsy, unlike the delicate Hindu hands; and so, although they forced him to practice incessantly, he could not learn. He said nothing about the boy, but, from what I saw of that boy afterward, I believe that nature created him especially to be a Thug, and have no doubt that he learned then to wield the cord with as much dexterity as the best strangler ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... the two front incisors, the upper only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except for the racial love of variety. "Sugar" (Thug) in the text means, primarily, the opening of the mouth, the gape: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... thug of 'em who gets in range of our machine-guns. Totten, hustle yourself down-stairs and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... "He struck me as being a slim young fellow, that's all." Of one thing he was assured: the evidence of these two men would prove that he had acted as a valiant protector and not as a thug—a fear which had not left his mind until now. They had seen the fleeing assailant, but there was only one person who could identify him. That person was Frances Cable, the victim. If it was not James Bansemer, then ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the assault, and attacks the attacker with strength enough to save the victim, arrest the disturber of the peace, ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell

... caps, and children that walk in their little sleeps! And little heaps in clothes baskets, that are babies! And—Theodosia Baxter—a Man! Out of a clear, inky sky! Why weren't you scared? How do you know—you never even saw his face—maybe he was a thief, and a marauder, and a thug!" ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... said, "don't look round while I speak to you, but go on with your cooking. I don't like the look of the leader of this party. He may be a respectable trader, he may be a Dacoit or a Thug. I want you to keep a sharp lookout, without seeming to do so. See that your pistols will come out of your girdle easily. Keep your sword handy for use. If you see anything suspicious, come over and tell me, and if there is not time for ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... are common in India. Even their trumpeting shows a ferocity and unbalance that terrifies the natives. Often these criminal elephants are sufferers of mental ailments. A respectable, law-abiding elephant herd will not allow a thug or rogue to live in their midst. They recognise him as dangerous for their society, and combine to force him ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... had been your own? But I will save you: I have sworn it. You shall be wax in these hands at last,"—the moment that voice thus claimed and insisted on redeeming him, the ruffian felt a cold shudder, his courage oozed, he could no more have nerved his arm against her than a Thug would have lifted his against the dire goddess of his murderous superstition. Jasper could not resist a belief that the life of this dreadful protectress was, somehow or other, made essential to his; that, were she to die, he should perish in some ghastly and preternatural expiation. But for the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... read on and on, you feel that on the very next page, Bismarck will surely go to the scaffold, or will fall by the dagger of some "friend of the people," a thug ever after regarded as the veritable Savior of his country for the assassination of the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... Egyptian night. Down, down, down I went. There are a great many things in life that I have forgotten. There are a great many more that I expect to forget, but that first ride down the coal shaft I never can forget. Thug! I had struck bottom. It is said that when one starts down hill in this world he keeps on going until he strikes bottom. My readers will certainly agree with me that reaching a resting place eight hundred feet under the surface I had found the lowest round of the ladder. Whatever I may be in ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... his duty, and the whole thing narrows down to the fact that he had incurred the enmity of the liquor dealers, who induced the Company to dismiss him. This action of the Company may please the men who hired a thug to assault Mr. Smith, and nearly batter his life out, but it is a poor way to make friends of peaceful citizens. It speaks poorly for personal liberty when a man is dismissed from a railway because he opposes the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... face savagely convulsed in a frown, I was meditating nothing but bloodshed and slaughter, and was continually clapping my hand to the hilt of my sword, which I had consecrated to this, I was observed by a soldier, that is, he either was a real soldier, or else he was some night-prowling thug, who challenged me. "Halt! Who goes there? What legion are you from? Who's your centurion?" "Since when have men in your outfit gone on pass in white shoes?" he retorted, when I had lied stoutly about both centurion and legion. Both my face and my confusion proved ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter



Words linked to "Thug" :   tough, goon, felon, malefactor, crook, hood, criminal, bully, punk, hoodlum, toughie, outlaw



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