thug
noun/θʌɡ/
/θʌɡ/
- a violent person, especially a criminal
- He was beaten up by a gang of thugs.
- The people who do these sorts of things are just mindless thugs.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- teenage
- young
- street
- …
- bunch
- gang
Word Originearly 19th cent. (originally referring to a member of an organization of robbers and assassins in India): from Hindi ṭhag ‘swindler, thief’, based on Sanskrit sthagati ‘he covers or conceals’. The current sense arose in the mid 19th cent.Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
Check pronunciation:
thug