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:

     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

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.