Termagant vs Virile - What's the difference?
termagant | virile |
A quarrelsome, scolding woman, especially one who is old and shrewish.
* 1663 ,
* 1907 , Isaac Flagg, Plato: the Apology and Crito , p. 196.:
* 1970 , Robertson Davies, Fifth Business :
(obsolete) A boisterous, brawling, turbulent person, whether male or female.
* Bale (1543)
* Macaulay
Quarrelsome and scolding or censorious; shrewish.
* 1993 , Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford :
Being manly; having characteristics associated with being male, such as strength; exhibiting masculine traits to an exaggerated degree such as strength, forcefulness or vigor.
(grammar) Pertaining to a grammatical gender used in plurals of some Slavic languages, corresponding to the personal masculine animate nouns.
As a proper noun termagant
is (archaic) an imaginary deity with a violent temperament who featured in medieval mystery plays, represented as being worshiped by muslims.As an adjective virile is
being manly; having characteristics associated with being male, such as strength; exhibiting masculine traits to an exaggerated degree such as strength, forcefulness or vigor.termagant
English
(wikipedia termagant)Noun
(en noun)- [...] Make feeble ladies, in their works, / To fight like termagants and Turks; [...]
- The name of Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, has become proverbial for a termagant .
- Easier divorce, equal pay for equal work as between men and women, no discrimination between the sexes in employment – these were her causes, and in promoting them she was no comic-strip feminist termagant , but reasonable, logical, and untiring.
- This terrible termagant , this Nero, this Pharaoh.
- The slave of an imperious and reckless termagant .
Synonyms
* (quarrelsome woman) shrew, viragoAdjective
(en adjective)- These bishops with their termagant wives throw the book at us and say believe because I demand belief and by God I will burn or hang and quarter you if you do not.