brute
pronunciation
How to pronounce brute in British English:
UK [bruːt]
How to pronounce brute in American English:
US [bruːt]
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- Noun:
- a cruelly rapacious person
- a living organism characterized by voluntary movement
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- Adjective:
- resembling a beast; showing lack of human sensibility
Word Origin
- brute
- brute: [15] The primordial meaning of brute appears to be ‘heavy’. It comes from Latin brūtus ‘heavy’, and it has been speculated that it is related to Latin grāvis ‘heavy’ (from which English gets grave, gravity, and grieve). In Latin the sense ‘heavy’ had already progressed to ‘stupid’, and it later developed to ‘of the lower animals’. It was with this meaning that the word reached English via French. Connotations of ‘cruelty’ do not begin to appear until the 17th century. Brut meaning ‘very dry’ in relation to champagne is a late 19th-century borrowing of the French adjectival form brut, literally ‘rough’.
- brute (adj.)
- early 15c., "of or belonging to animals," from Middle French brut "coarse, brutal, raw, crude," from Latin brutus "heavy, dull, stupid," an Oscan word, from PIE root *gwere- (2) "heavy" (see grave (adj.)). Before reaching English the meaning expanded to "of the lower animals." Used of human beings from 1530s.
- brute (n.)
- 1610s, from brute (adj.).
Antonym
Example
- 1. How can she bear such a brute ?
- 2. The latest bloody furore was provoked by the belated release on the web of an amateurish film , probably made by a coptic egyptian resident in america , attacking the prophet muhammad as a fraud , brute and pervert .
- 3. Destroy , bypass or manipulate the high security systems with ingenuity or sheer brute force .
- 4. Despite their proven intelligence , wookiees were enslaved by the empire and exploited for their brute strength .
- 5. He plugged this intelligence into his favorite brute force password cracker and was rewarded in less than half an hour with the admin account .