Definition of "truculent"

She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.

1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861

RUFIO (truculently). Are your men Romans? If not, it matters not how many there are, provided you are no stronger than 500 to ten.

1898, George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while the former was eating.

1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 10, in The Beasts of Tarzan, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published March 1916

It is an important source of the value of moral rights then that — speaking very generally — they dispose people with opposed interests to be reasonable rather than arrogant and truculent.

1992, Joel Feinberg, “The Social Importance of Moral Rights”, in Philosophical Perspectives‎, Ethics, page 195

These bitches is getting truculent.(Referring to women in bin Laden’s compound.)

2013 February 11, Phil Bronstein, quoting SEAL Team Six Member, “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed”, in Esquire Magazine‎

Voltaire is never either gross or ((((truculent))).

1872, John Morley, Voltaire

More or less (((truculent))) Plagues.

1665, Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague … with several waies for purifying the air in houses, streets