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Truculent vs Diffident - What's the difference?

truculent | diffident |

As adjectives the difference between truculent and diffident

is that truculent is cruel or savage while diffident is (archaic): lacking confidence in others; distrustful.

truculent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • cruel or savage
  • When we were touring on a riverboat near Dandong, the truculent North Korean soldiers from the other side of the river gave us a steely-eyed death stare.
  • Deadly or destructive.
  • Defiant or uncompromising.
  • Eager or quick to argue, fight or start a conflict.
  • * 1992 , (Joel Feinberg), “ The Social Importance of Moral Rights” in (Philosophical Perspectives) VI (Ethics, 1992), page 195:
  • It is an important source of the value of moral rights then that?—?speaking very generally?—?they dispose people with opposed interests to be reasonable rather than arrogant and truculent .
  • * 2010 , Member, in Esquire Magazine "The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden..."[http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313?src=rss]
  • (Refering to women in Bin Laden's compound) "These bitches is getting truculent ".

    Quotations

    * 1847 , , , ch VI, *: In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening. * 1860-1861 , (Charles Dickens), , ch XLVI, *: She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. * 1895 , , , ch 10, *: Most of them were little dramatic situations, crucial dialogues, the return of Mr. Hoopdriver to his native village, for instance, in a well-cut holiday suit and natty gloves, the unheard asides of the rival neighbours, the delight of the old 'mater,' the intelligence—"A ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus, mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog. * 1914 , (Edgar Rice Burroughs), , ch 10, *: If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while the former was eating. * 1922 ,(Rafael Sabatini), , ch XVI, *: Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent denunciation. * 1925 , (Richard Henry Tawney), "Introduction", to (Thomas Wilson) A discourse upon usury by way of dialogue and orations: for the better variety and more delight of all those that shall read this treatise (1572); Classics of social and political science [ Page 2] *: Whatever his prejudices — and his book shows that they were tough — the most truculent of self-made capitalists could not have criticised him as a child in matters of finance. He had tried commercial cases, negotiated commercial treaties, ...

    Synonyms

    * (cruel or savage): barbarous, cruel, ferocious, fierce, savage * (deadly or destructive): deadly, destructive * (defiant or uncompromising): defiant, inflexible, stubborn, uncompromising, unyielding * belligerent

    See also

    * belligerent

    Anagrams

    * ----

    diffident

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (archaic): Lacking confidence in others; distrustful.
  • Lacking confidence in one's self; distrustful of one's own powers; not self-reliant; timid; modest; bashful; characterized by modest reserve.
  • *
  • Having therefore—but hold, as we are diffident of our own abilities, let us here invite a superior power to our assistance.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year=1960 , author= , title=(Jeeves in the Offing) , section=chapter VIII , passage=At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade.}}