Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Murderous \Mur"der*ous\, a.
Of or pertaining to murder; characterized by, or causing,
murder or bloodshed; having the purpose or quality of murder;
bloody; sanguinary; as, the murderous king; murderous rapine;
murderous intent; a murderous assault. ``Murderous coward.''
--Shak. -- Mur"der*ous*ly, adv.
Syn: Bloody; sanguinary; bloodguilty; bloodthirsty; fell; savage; cruel.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. 1 Intending, or likely to commit murder; bloodthirsty or homicidal. 2 Very difficult.
WordNet
Usage examples of "murderous".
Brutus and his men that night Achates was born, only infinitely more frightening, more murderous.
The half-minute signal-gun beside him spoke out again and again and again, and yet still the Berceau came on into the certainty of a murderous raking fire.
The bogies collected in murderous little gangs of two, three and four and rushed the ships.
Library in Vienna will receive back the original botchy, tormented note-pages which Beethoven with murderous labor and pain copied from the last printed edition of the score.
And now Buffo, in his delirium, began to shake, to shake and shiver most horribly, to most horribly grimace and to convulse himself in such a way that his immense form seemed to be everywhere at once, dissolving into a dozen Buffos, armed with a dozen murderous knives all streaming rags of blood, and leap and tumble as he might, Walser could find no place in the ring where Buffo was not and gave up hope for himself.
Riddler, his murderous sister Cime, Bashir of Free Nisibis who brought Enlil into the war, and Grille, representative of Ranke under whose aegis even the Tysian mageguild had sent a young adept along to fight.
As before, a massive wave of clairvoyant impressions surged off the walls of that structure and rushed toward me with dismaying power and substance-occult substance but deadly nonetheless, as real to me as a murderous tidal wave.
He mixed diphtheria poison with the serum of a healthy guinea-pig who was not immune, who had never had diphtheria or been cured from it either, and this serum did not hinder one bit the murderous action of the poison.
General Beck made his last-minute preparations for directing the coup until Stauffenberg could return by air from his murderous deed.
The venom of murderous intent could be stalled, outwilled through doubleblind logic and feint.
His bullets had ended the murderous career of Killer Durgan, cheating the notorious slayer of a final victim!
Kates went over to where Dutra was swinging the machete with murderous power.
Rather than the expert on the interior he had claimed to be, Dutra had turned out to be a murderous thug who had sometimes gone upriver to hide out from the law.
Behemoth-sized shadows moved, nightmarish ellipsoid hulls with flat heads, blazing optical sensors, and multiple murderous arms.
The wise old immortal gunned down by the out-of-town thug, just because he happened to take on the persona of a murderous fugitive?