procacious

From Latin procax (“bold, impudent”), from proco (“ask, demand”), from procus (“suitor”).

• IPA^(key): /pɹəˈkeɪʃəs/
• enPR: prəkāshəs
• Rhymes: -eɪʃəs

procacious (comparative more procacious, superlative most procacious)

1. Bold, forward, insolent.
   • 1660, Richard Baxter, chapter 45, in A Treatise of Self-Denyall‎, London: Nevil Simmons, page 238:

     Another piece of Vain-glory to be Denied, is in The Reputation of strength and valour. The witless part of men, especially in their procacious humours, do use to be carried away with this […]

   • 1882, John Brown, “Mr. Syme” in Horæ Subsecivæ, New Edition, First Series, Edinburgh: David Douglas, p. 370,

     In his little room in the Surgical Hospital—once the High School his house-surgeons and clerks and dressers—now all over the world, working out his principles and practice—will well remember how delightful he was, standing with his back to the fire, making wise jokes now abating a procacious youth, now heartening a shy homely one

   • 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!: Six Stories, Johns Hopkins University Press, published 1982, page 149:

     Philosophy first became public when it proposed to teach character to this strapping lout with a procacious cock, the superfluous energy of a horse, and the restless attention of a child, […]

   • 1989, Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian Novel, New York: Viking, The Sixteenth Book, p. 354:

     The prospect of being ruled by their chattering brown compatriots, however, so appalled the politicians of West Karnistan—and in particular the mercurial Zaleel Shah Jhoota, a procacious autocrat who had managed to convince a majority of West Karnistani voters that he was really a precocious socialist—that they persuaded Jarasandha Khan to declare the election results null and void, declare martial law in the East and lock up all the Gelabin politicians the Karnistani Army could lay their hands and batons on.

• procacity