How To Use Pugnacious In A Sentence

  • HIS solid frame, love of food and pugnacious character make him one of cricket's most familiar and popular figures. The Sun
  • THE white-tailed kite cruising over the coastal grassland at Stratford Point is feeling pugnacious.
  • She would bark pugnaciously - a throaty howl almost like a mating cry - whenever she got a hint of their presence, even if they just whispered too loud at the window.
  • A catfight breaks out between restless, wilful Miss Braund and her pugnacious chaperone, Mrs Hammond, ending with a slap from the hostess, the hatchet-faced Mrs Rogers.
  • The interviewer got nowhere with trying to manipulate or trip up the pugnacious trial lawyer turned politician.
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  • The pugnacious, charismatic hectoring figure shown in his full glory on television in recent days also remains a prime candidate to host a similarly hard-hitting political talk show.
  • To climb the greasy pole you must be competitive and pugnacious. Times, Sunday Times
  • Pecksniffian pretentious pugnacious quixotic sardoodledom sputum subpoena vanity sizing w00t Pretentious Pecksniffian Cruft
  • What a way to go for the most pugnacious, aggressive Liberal minister I've seen in action.
  • There it was: a shiny black, three-ton hulk of metal squatting pugnaciously on the narrow beach road near my parents' home.
  • A pugnacious manager opens the door and leads us to a living room filled with people - Palmer's son and daughter, his wife, and the man himself, looking dapper in brown leather shoes and a blue Savile Row shirt.
  • There was none of the extreme 'bumptiousness' and pugnacious impudence of twenty years ago; indeed, the beach-boys, nowhere a promising class, were rather civil than otherwise. To the Gold Coast for Gold A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Volume I
  • “natural selection” obscure the fact that the idea of the web of life (expressed in less pugnacious and bloodthirsty language) replaced old notions of interre - lationships by design, and provided a basis in evolu - tionary theory for modern ideas of ecology, the biotic community, the biocenose, and its fashionable and contemporary theoretical expression, the ecosystem. ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE
  • He had a walking stick and his whole manner was so pugnacious and focused.
  • And they are therefore going to reject my old friend and sparring partner, the boss-eyed and pugnacious shadow education secretary, Edward Balls. Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
  • Dick Cheney pugnaciously declared about April 7th that President Obama's policies were making America less safe, setting off major jawboning among the talking heads. Rove, Cheney and Limbaugh: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
  • If they happen to get on the hands or fingers, they submit to be restored to the gate; but go to the formicary on the mango-tree half a dozen yards away and offer a friendly finger, and you will find dozens of pugnacious individuals ready to defend their home. Tropic Days
  • pugnacious spirits...lamented that there was so little prospect of an exhilarating disturbance
  • He was typecast for years as a pugnacious gangster and ornery little SOB.
  • After seven months as a mostly low-profile attorney general, he re-emerged as a pugnacious, crusading politician, fully in keeping with his past as one of the Senate's most passionately conservative members.
  • To climb the greasy pole you must be competitive and pugnacious. Times, Sunday Times
  • HIS solid frame, love of food and pugnacious character make him one of cricket's most familiar and popular figures. The Sun
  • A corporation that accepts itself as a subcaste in a great divine hierarchy is different from the more pugnacious ganas and sanghas of the Pali Canon, Kautilya or even the Jataka stories.
  • Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious, in the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a fight, no propense love of quarrelling; but there was that in him which would allow him to yield to no attack. Doctor Thorne
  • The dog was, unsurprisingly given its breed, a pugnacious character at times. FRIENDS FOR LIFE
  • He was a small, muscly, pugnacious man with thinning short grey hair. INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS
  • It was caused by the snare drummer, a pugnacious young Celt, who burst in upon his comrades at eleven o'clock with a loud defiance of "doughboy" justice, and an oath that he know'd the man as shot Gleason and suspicioned Ray, and he'd have him at the gallows yet. Marion's Faith.
  • Pugnacious, bold, and curious, like other weasels, the wolverine is omnivorous and consumes a wide range of edible roots and berries, small game, and fish.
  • Horowitz disdained the expressive and formal role of dissonance in this music, and attenuated the pugnaciousness and philosophical implications that this repertoire must above all convey.
  • His political career would be dogged by the reputation for pugnacious sectarianism he acquired in the 1930s.
  • They remain true to character, with Nixon sentimentally reminiscing about flipping burgers in the Pacific and Mao pugnaciously recalling riding eastward to conquer Beijing. Titans Shaking Hands, But Still Worlds Apart
  • But fierce competition and the pugnacious attitude of the banks have squeezed providers. Times, Sunday Times
  • The dog was, unsurprisingly given its breed, a pugnacious character at times. FRIENDS FOR LIFE
  • But Stacey pugnaciously defends his bandmate.
  • The President was in a pugnacious mood when he spoke to journalists about the rebellion.
  • “An archetype,” Michael interrupted pugnaciously, his voice wobbling slightly. THE FORBIDDEN GAME
  • Fishermen report that the snaggle-toothed intruder is one pugnacious gamefish. Invasive Northern Snakehead Found in the Potomac River
  • They are as pugnacious as stinkpot turtles and when threatened they quickly secrete a foul smelling liquid.
  • But Gingrich the pugnacious pugilist has not been satisfied to rest on his unpleasantness. John Feffer: The New Marx
  • But fierce competition and the pugnacious attitude of the banks have squeezed providers. Times, Sunday Times
  • A pugnacious, charismatic figure, the potentially dicey situation he is facing at Rangers is small beer in comparison to the personal trauma he has overcome through sheer force of will.
  • Bloom, a pugnacious professor, says that he reads to clear his mind of cant and for self-improvement, not to influence others, which seems somewhat disingenuous given the subject of his book.
  • The adult males are extremely pugnacious and fight fiercely with one another.
  • As we climbed the podium, I mentioned that his book title, "God Is Not Great," (which, on the book's cover, has a pugnaciously lowercase "god") was exactly correct. The atheist and the rabbi: Arguing about God with Christopher Hitchens
  • Little women are notoriously pugnacious, and, as a matter of 250 copies of the "Old-fashioned Girl" have also found lodgings on the library shelves, no wonder that there was a "muss" on the premises. Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 20, August 13, 1870
  • At nesting time the parents become bold and pugnacious attacking crows, magpies, cuckoos and kestrels crossing their territory.
  • But fierce competition and the pugnacious attitude of the banks have squeezed providers. Times, Sunday Times
  • Many people object to geese in a poultry-yard on account of the pugnacious habits of the gander; but when a gander is brought up with other fowls he becomes familiar with them, and is not likely to do them any injury. The Lady's Country Companion: or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
  • By contrast, Jaidee, the so-called Tiger of Bangkok, is the pugnaciously idealistic captain of the white shirts, determined to preserve his country against the onslaught of foreign influence and corruption. Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl," winner of the Nebula Award
  • As is well known, the robin is pugnacious, fighting with its own kind and attacking other birds.
  • To climb the greasy pole you must be competitive and pugnacious. Times, Sunday Times
  • At nesting time the parents become bold and pugnacious attacking crows, magpies, cuckoos and kestrels crossing their territory.
  • General Curtis LeMay was a tough, often brilliant, pugnacious deployer of air power -- organizing the debilitating and destructive carpet bombing campaigns of Japan and later viewed by many as being a bit too trigger happy when it came to using nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Steve Clemons: Take Michael Hayden Off the "Curtis LeMay Today List"
  • Enthusiastic is one word that works, driven is another that can be recommended, there's pugnacious of course, and yet the best one might be ‘expert’.
  • He was an outspoken advocate of law reform, a pugnacious critic of established political doctrines like natural law and contractarianism, and the first to produce a utilitarian justification for democracy.
  • I'd had lots of friends and classmates back in my high school days who'd seemed a lot like him: the grandkids of Italian and Sicilian immigrants, they were smiling and open-hearted, spunky and pugnacious.
  • Has the world's most pugnacious advocate for the world's poor, a man who almost single-handedly brought the appalling images of famine-struck Africa into the front rooms of millions of Britons, finally gone too far?
  • ‘My Times,’ by contrast, is the work of a journalistic fugitive with nothing to lose, a man pugnaciously determined to go down swinging.
  • The dog was, unsurprisingly given its breed, a pugnacious character at times. FRIENDS FOR LIFE
  • We have known a male mierkat so assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to them every morsel of food given him, that we have been compelled to shut him up in a room alone when feeding him, to prevent his starving himself to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting exactly those psychic qualities which are generally regarded as peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far more pugnacious towards each other than are the males. Woman and Labour
  • They absorbed a lot of pressure, their back four, hard-working and combative in face of opponents who were persistent and pugnacious.
  • He assumed her pugnacious antielitism struck a chord that still reverberated with people who even in good times couldn’t shake their sense of persecution. O: A Presidential Novel
  • There's nothing - absolutely nothing - that the pugnacious little Dubliner likes better than standing centre stage, dodging the brickbats.
  • Although Taylor's soldiers have their moments of pugnacious camaraderie, their relations to the women are far more respectful, even worshipful, than Robbins' testosterone-laced sailors.
  • A catfight breaks out between restless, wilful Miss Braund and her pugnacious chaperone, Mrs Hammond, ending with a slap from the hostess, the hatchet-faced Mrs Rogers.
  • Bass being pugnacious and aggressive creatures by nature, the take is often a very violent affair.
  • According to my bird book, bulbuls are pugnacious, and are still used as contestants in bulbul fights.
  • HIS solid frame, love of food and pugnacious character make him one of cricket's most familiar and popular figures. The Sun
  • Consider: The Ron Paul who in 1988 ran for president as a Libertarian spoke pugnaciously of abolishing "unconstitutional" entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. Why Ron Paul Can't Win
  • Response: This is an adult scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus, a member of the genus Tyrannus, so named for their pugnacious nature when defending their territories against marauding crows and other, even larger, predators. Mystery bird: scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus
  • His life was one of varied and significant achievements - an advocate at the Scottish bar, a sound if impatient and pugnacious judge of the Court of Session, and a politically active Whig.
  • The company has been pugnaciously fighting legal cases against rivals.
  • She presides over her uptown domain with benignity, unpredictable wit, two-fisted pugnaciousness, and a remarkable insight into the human condition.
  • Planck's distance from today's world, filled with battling blogs, turbulent tweets and pugnacious press conferences, doesn't make his message matter any less, Brossard suggests, as we ponder the latest high-profile hullabaloo in science —NASA's arsenic microbe kerfuffle. Arsenic microbe answers a long way off
  • The milquetoast types of New Labour never come off well when they try to act like self-styled pugnacious political heavyweights.
  • The dog was, unsurprisingly given its breed, a pugnacious character at times. FRIENDS FOR LIFE
  • The males, said to be polygamists, are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst the females are quite pacific.
  • “What about you falling into a pit of snakes right in the middle of an argument?” she demanded pugnaciously. Black Magic
  • As happens to most men of such quality who attack the accepted smugness and intellectual sloth of their times, he was stamped as a perverse pugnacious fellow who delighted in being against the wisdom of the age.
  • True or not, the story is in character: Mr Emanuel is famous for being the president's most pugnacious panjandrum and congressional and media manipulator, and proud of it to boot.

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