bellicose
/ˈbɛlɪkoʊs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.28 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Warlike or combative in nature; aggressively hostile.
Example Sentences
- "You don't have to be so bellicose, and we can work out a peaceful solution."
- "CHINA sent both bellicose and conciliatory signals yesterday as tension continued in the Taiwan Strait over Chinese military exercises and the deployment of US naval battle groups."
- "The core Ice Age cast—wooly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), sabertooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary), and sloth Sid (John Leguizamo)—are set adrift, sailing the high seas on a chunk of ice until they collide with a bellicose primate (Peter Dinklage)."
- "[Greenland's current Prime Minister Múte] Egede has insisted that Greenland is not for sale and he framed the polling partly as a referendum on Trump's seemingly bellicose bullying, saying the election was a "fateful choice.""
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dewh₂-der.? Proto-Italic *dwenos Archaic Latin duenos Old Latin *duenelos? Old Latin duellum Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Old Latin -icus Old Latin duellicus Latin bellicusder. Latin bellicum signumellip.? Latin bellicum Proto-Indo-European *h₃ed- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *h₃édosder.? Proto-Italic *-ŏ̄dsos? Old Latin -ōssus Latin -ōsus Latin bellicosusder. Middle English bellicose English bellicose From Middle English bellicose, from Latin bellicosus.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: bellicose, bellicosus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈbɛlɪkoʊs/
Inflected Forms
more bellicose (comparative)
most bellicose (superlative)