thug
Other forms: thugs
A thug is a bad guy or a bully, especially a violent one. A thug might break into someone's house, push its owners around, and steal their TV.
It's hard to reason with thugs, since they'd rather intimidate and physically hurt people than talk. A playground bully is one kind of thug, and an armed robber is an even more dangerous one. The noun thug may have its oldest roots in the Sanskrit word sthaga-s, "cunning or fraudulent," and it's definitely related to the Marathi and Hindi thag, "cheat or swindler." The earliest use of thug, from 1810, was "member of a murdering gang of robbers in India."
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an aggressive and violent young criminal
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Vocabulary lists containing thug
In Nic Stone's unflinching exploration of racism, high school student Justyce McAllister writes letters to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to process the violence and prejudice he encounters in his community.
Based on real events, this graphic novel written by G. Neri and illustrated by Randy DuBurke traces the life of an eleven-year-old who gets caught up in gang violence.
In this thought-provoking exploration of bias and injustice, a twelve-year-old boy meets the ghost of Emmett Till (an African-American teen who was lynched in 1955) in the afterlife.