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Brute vs Vicious - What's the difference?

brute | vicious |

As a noun brute

is .

As an adjective vicious is

pertaining to vice; characterised by immorality or depravity.

brute

English

(wikipedia brute)

Adjective

(more)
  • Without reason or intelligence (of animals).
  • a brute beast
  • Characteristic of unthinking animals; senseless, unreasoning (of humans).
  • * Milton
  • A creature not prone / And brute as other creatures, but endued / With sanctity of reason.
  • Being unconnected with intelligence or thought; purely material, senseless.
  • the brute''' earth; the '''brute powers of nature
  • Crude, unpolished.
  • * Sir Walter Scott
  • a great brute farmer from Liddesdale
  • *
  • Strong, blunt, and spontaneous.
  • I punched him with brute force.
  • Brutal; cruel; fierce; ferocious; savage; pitiless.
  • brute violence

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • * 1714 , (Bernard Mandeville), The Fable of the Bees :
  • 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.
  • * 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.17:
  • 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.
  • A person with the characteristics of an unthinking animal; a coarse or brutal person.
  • 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.
  • (archaic, slang, UK, Cambridge University) One who has not yet matriculated.
  • Derived terms

    * brutal * brutality * brute force * brutish

    Verb

    (brut)
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    vicious

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • Pertaining to vice; characterised by immorality or depravity.
  • *, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.195:
  • *:We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vicious .
  • Evil, immoral or depraved.
  • Violent, destructive and cruel.
  • Savage and aggressive.
  • *
  • Synonyms

    *

    Derived terms

    * vicious circle