Crossword clues for pugnacity
pugnacity
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pugnacity \Pug*nac"i*ty\, n. [L. pugnacitas: cf. F.
pugnacit['e].]
Inclination or readiness to fight; quarrelsomeness. `` A
national pugnacity of character.''
--Motley.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1600, from Latin pugnacitas "fondness for fighting," from pugnax (genitive pugnacis) "combative" (see pugnacious).\n
Wiktionary
n. The act or characteristic of being aggressive or combative.
WordNet
n. a disposition to fight [syn: aggressiveness, contentiousness, belligerence, quarrelsomeness]
Usage examples of "pugnacity".
Hermon Husband nose-to-nose with the risen Barlow, his round black hat thrust down on his head and his beard bristling with pugnacity.
Six of them now to man it, and the forward two could hoist most of its weight and balance it, while the lightest weights, Spuggy Price and Jimmy Grocott, manfully matched their small persons but immense pugnacity next in the line, and Toffee Bill and Ginger, the architect of the whole enterprise, brought up the rear with no spare length going to waste, and all their force behind the ram.
The Chickasaws were notorious all over the frontier for their pugnacity and independence.
The baiting of Jews, the hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers and ducking of Methodists, the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians, express much rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pugnacity of which we all share the vestiges, and that inborn hatred of the alien and of eccentric and non-conforming men as aliens, than they express the positive piety of the various perpetrators.