Brute

How to spell brute

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce brute

What does brute mean?

1. nounA savagely cruel, violent, or insensitive person, or a large rough animal.
2. adjectiveRelating to raw physical strength or force used without skill or reason.

Brute in a sentence

• noun

  The prison guard was a brute who showed no mercy to anyone.

• adjective

  They shifted the fallen tree by sheer brute force alone.

• noun

  The old boxer fought like a brute, swinging without any technique.

• adjective

  Solving the lock by brute strength rather than cleverness took hours.

Where does brute come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin adjective brutus, which literally meant 'heavy, dull, or stupid', and by extension described anything lacking reason or refinement. The Romans even used it as a personal name, most famously for the Brutus involved in Julius Caesar's death, and the root sense of being unthinking or irrational stayed attached to it. English took the word in the fifteenth century by way of Old French brut and its feminine form brute, where it first described animals as creatures without reason, contrasted with rational human beings. From that animal sense it broadened to label a cruel or savagely violent person, and the adjective use survives in phrases like 'brute force', meaning raw power applied without finesse. The single silent-looking final -e is the only real spelling trap, since the word sounds as if it could end in plain -oot.

How the word is built

• brut- (from Latin brutus: heavy, dull, irrational)
• -e