ferocious

English

Etymology

Taken from Latin ferōx (“wild, bold, savage, fierce”) +‎ -ous.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fəˈɹəʊʃəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊʃəs

Adjective

ferocious (comparative more ferocious, superlative most ferocious)

1. Marked by extreme and violent energy.
   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 376:

     But it seemed to me that there were few faces like his, with the ferocious profile that brought to mind the Latin word rapax or one of Rouault's crazed death-dealing arbitrary kings.

   • 2011 October 1, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16-12 Scotland”, in BBC Sport‎^[1]:

     Scotland needed a victory by eight points to have a realistic chance of progressing to the knock-out stages, and for long periods of a ferocious contest looked as if they might pull it off.

   • 2023 January 25, Howard Johnston, “Peter Kelly: August 2 1944-December 28 2022”, in RAIL, number 975, page 47:

     "My memory of him in the office at Peterborough was the ferocious nature of his typing, on a manual machine of course. This was long before the days of desktop publishing, and you could hear him down the corridor absolutely hammering the keyboard."

2. Extreme or intense.

Synonyms

• fierce

Derived terms

• ferociously

Related terms

• ferity
• ferocity
• fierce
• feral

Translations

Marked by extreme and violent energy

• Arabic: شَرِس (šaris)
• Armenian: վայրագ (hy) (vayrag)
• Azerbaijani: şiddətli (az), dəhşətli (az)
• Belarusian: лю́ты (be) (ljúty)
• Bulgarian: див (bg) (div), свиреп (bg) (svirep)
• Catalan: ferotge
• Chamicuro: pchajtoki
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 猖 (zh) (chāng), 兇猛／凶猛 (zh) (xiōngměng)

• Dutch: woest (nl), wild (nl), heftig (nl)
• Esperanto: feroca (eo)
• Finnish: julma (fi), raivokas (fi), raivopäinen
• French: féroce (fr)
• German: wild (de), brutal (de), grausam (de)
• Greek: άγριος (el) (ágrios)
• Hungarian: kegyetlen (hu)
• Ido: feroca (io)
• Italian: feroce (it), efferato (it), abominevole (it), odioso (it)
• Japanese: 猛々しい (ja) (たけだけしい, takedakeshii)
• Kazakh: тағы (tağy), жабайы (jabaiy), мейірімсіз (meiırımsız), қатал (qatal)
• Korean: 사납다 (ko) (sanapda)
• Latin: ferox (la), trux
• Macedonian: див (div), сви́реп (svírep)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: grusom, vill (no), heftig

• Persian: سبع (fa) (sabo')
• Plautdietsch: grausom
• Polish: brutalny (pl), bestialski (pl), okrutny (pl)
• Portuguese: feroz (pt)
• Russian: свире́пый (ru) (svirépyj), жесто́кий (ru) (žestókij)
• Spanish: feroz (es)
• Swedish: vild (sv), vildsint (sv)
• Turkish: zalim (tr)
• Ukrainian: лю́тий (uk) (ljútyj)
• Welsh: brochwyllt

Further reading

• “ferocious”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “ferocious”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “ferocious”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.