Ruffian vs Brute - What's the difference?
ruffian | brute |
A scoundrel, rascal, or unprincipled, deceitful, brutal and unreliable person.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) A pimp; a pander.
(obsolete) A lover; a paramour.
* Bishop Reynolds
Without reason or intelligence (of animals).
Characteristic of unthinking animals; senseless, unreasoning (of humans).
* Milton
Being unconnected with intelligence or thought; purely material, senseless.
Crude, unpolished.
* Sir Walter Scott
*
Strong, blunt, and spontaneous.
Brutal; cruel; fierce; ferocious; savage; pitiless.
* 1714 , (Bernard Mandeville), The Fable of the Bees :
* 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.17:
A person with the characteristics of an unthinking animal; a coarse or brutal person.
*
(archaic, slang, UK, Cambridge University) One who has not yet matriculated.
As nouns the difference between ruffian and brute
is that ruffian is a scoundrel, rascal, or unprincipled, deceitful, brutal and unreliable person while brute is .As a verb ruffian
is to play the ruffian; to rage; to raise tumult.As an adjective ruffian
is brutal; cruel; savagely boisterous; murderous.ruffian
English
Noun
(en noun)- Wilt thou on thy deathbed play the ruffian ?
- He [her husband] is no sooner abroad than she is instantly at home, revelling with her ruffians .
Synonyms
* rogue * scampAnagrams
* ----brute
English
(wikipedia brute)Adjective
(more)- a brute beast
- A creature not prone / And brute as other creatures, but endued / With sanctity of reason.
- the brute''' earth; the '''brute powers of nature
- a great brute farmer from Liddesdale
- I punched him with brute force.
- brute violence
Noun
(en noun)- they laid before them how unbecoming it was the Dignity of such sublime Creatures to be sollicitous about gratifying those Appetites, which they had in common with Brutes , and at the same time unmindful of those higher qualities that gave them the preeminence over all visible Beings.
- But if he lives badly, he will, in the next life, be a woman; if he (or she) persists in evil-doing, he (or she) will become a brute , and go on through transmigrations until at last reason conquers.
- One of them was a hulking brute of a man, heavily tattooed and with a hardened face that practically screamed "I just got out of jail."
- She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.